Emerging Adulthood in Iran

Has Emerging Adulthood taken hold in Iran? The New York Times reports on one trend that's consistent with a prolonged transition to adulthood, namely the growing number of single women in their mid-20s and even 30s in the country. As is the case elsewhere, a strong correlate (if not causal factor) of Iranian women's extended singlehood is their involvement in higher education. According to the article:

There are no official statistics on the number of women living by themselves in big cities in Iran. But university professors, real estate agents, families and many young women all say that a phenomenon extremely rare just 10 years ago is becoming commonplace, propelled by a continuous wave of female students entering universities and a staggering rise in divorces.

Elsewhere in the article, it says that women comprise approximately 60 percent of university enrollments.

Another quote from the article with overtones of Emerging Adulthood is the following (the red highlighting is mine):

Big city life, with its opportunities and freedoms, has created new ambitions, [a single woman] said, and allowed her and her friends to lead lives completely different from their parents’.