The head of the Research Center of Iran’s Parliament says there are 121 female judges in Iran, but they are not authorized to sign a verdict.

According to Babak Negahdari, women in the Islamic Republic can preside in family court and draft the verdict, but the final ruling has to be signed by a male judge.

After the 1979 revolution, in addition to the hijab, the Islamic republic forced all female employees of the court system out of their jobs.

Women were only given supportive roles and no leadership positions in the governmental institutions after the revolution.

“During the following years, parliamentarians made amendments to the law on the conditions for the selection of judges and passed the family protection bill, making it possible to attract and employ women as advisory judges in family courts, but they did not give women the right to sign verdicts,” added Negahdari.

There are no definitive figures on the number of women working anywhere in the Iranian judiciary today.

On the other hand, it was estimated that eight out of every 100 judges are women. In the past few years, fewer than 30 percent of participants in the judges' exams have been women, for what little roles remain available to them. Putting these scattered statistics together, it is evident that women have no place in the top echelons of Iran’s judiciary.