The extent and nature of drug abuse in women in our country have not been fully understood this results in neglect of the needs of women in all types of plannings on drug abuse prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and harm reduction. The objective of this study is to collect and analyze the information available on the prevalence and the patterns of drug abuse in women in Iran using internal and external scientific literature. This review shows that in the recent years information production and publication have been improved significantly. It can be roughly estimated that there are about 100,000 to 150,000 opioid dependent women in Iran. The feature for heroin abuse is worrying and the number of female injecting drug users is estimated to be 4,000 to 9,000. It seems that cannabis use is not common among Iranian women, although it is more prevalent in groups of women. Cannabis use and alcohol use do not seem to be rare in the female university students. A continuous source of gender-specific accurate data is needed to sensitize the responsible people for drug abuse prevention and treatment to include female-specific interventions in the overall programmes of the country