Iranian segregation....

Ahmadinejad continues his Islamist policies....

An increase in efforts to separate men and women in Iranian institutions has sparked concern that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered a substantial tightening of state policy on sex segregation since his June reelection.

Since Ahmadinejad was elected, the government has made various moves to further segregate office buildings, hospitals, public parks and primary schools and in the half year since the president was reelected a number of Iranian ministers and religious leaders have called for a more strict adherence to sex segregation in various aspects of public life.

"There has definitely been a concerted effort to rekindle the kind of policies that enforce gender segregation," Dr. Mehrdad Khonsari, a senior research consultant at the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies told The Media Line. "There are efforts to have separate dining areas in universities, to close co-ed places, the atmosphere is just generally different."