For Women's Rights or for Politics?

On Wednesday, The United Nations launched UN Women, a new agency devoted to promoting and protecting women's rights around the world, with seats for 41 member nations. Many nations, including Nigeria, DR Congo, and Saudi Arabia applied and were granted seats on this new council. One notable and controversial exclusion was Iran, who applied as one of the 10 members from Asia but was replaced at the last minute by East Timor. The AFP reports:

"They lost and they lost handily," commented US ambassador Susan Rice on Iran's defeat.
"We have made no secret of our concern that Iran joining the board of UN Women would have been an inauspicious start to that board," she told reporters.

The claim of Iran's exclusion being due to their abysmal women's rights record would be easier to buy were it not for DR Congo's and especially Saudi Arabia's easily obtained seats on the council. The epidemic of mass rape in DR Congo would not seem to make the nation an exemplar of protecting women, and Saudi Arabia oppresses their female citizens to such a complete and inhuman degree (they are not allowed to even leave their own homes without the company of either a spouse or blood relative, and of course must remain covered when in public) its like the Islamic Kingdom is trying to win some bizarro Nobel prize for violating human rights.
This is not to diminish the suffering of Iran's women at all; from the Islamic dress code, to being banned from places like soccer matches, to unjust and cruel imprisonment and execution by stoning, the gross mistreatment of Iranian women is legendary and ongoing. But for the UN to imply that Iran's record is worse than a country like Saudi Arabia, the world leader in oppressing women, is just ridiculous. Iranian women outnumber men at universities, and, unlike Saudi Arabia, women in Iran are allowed to go pretty much where they choose, although not without hazarding threats from the Morality Police should a headscarf be out of place or a blouse be too formfitting.
It seems blatantly political that the UN would take care to keep Iran off this new council while accepting Saudi Arabia and DR Congo seemingly without issue. One must not ignore the ongoing sanctions against Iran, which today brought this development:

Nigeria has vowed to report Iran to the United Nations Security Council if Nigerian investigators find evidence that an apparently illegal arms shipment seized in Nigeria violated UN sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

 Is Iran's seemingly deliberate exclusion from UN Women yet another sanction against this moment's global pariah? If the United Nations prime concern here was truly protecting and advancing women's rights, then they would keep Saudi Arabia as far away from that council as possible.