Nimble Fingers No Longer! Women's Employment in Iran

Abstract

This paper reexamines the evolution of women's labor force participation (LFP) and employment in Iran in light of five decades of census data from 1956 to 2006. We show that changes in schooling and economic structure have fundamentally transformed the nature of female LFP and employment in the country. Although women's overall LFP rate was slow to recover following a sharp drop in the aftermath of the 1979 Revolution, it has gathered momentum in recent years. More importantly, an increasingly larger proportion of educated women aged 20-50 years are employed in the private sector in professional positions in urban areas. This is quite different from the expansion of female employment before the Revolution, which predominantly consisted of jobs for very young, uneducated women in rural areas mostly as unpaid family workers in producing carpets and handicraft. We argue that economic and political factors after the Revolution have played central roles in shaping the new trends and show that they are likely to have played a far more important part than ideological ones, particularly Islamization, did in reducing female LFP and employment during the first decade of the Revolution. The reduction in female employment during that decade was essentially due to declines of private sector jobs, particularly low skill ones in rural handicrafts, closely connected with the disruption of production and trade in the aftermath of Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War. In recent years, however, it is unemployment among educated women that has risen sharply because their entry into the labor force has significantly outpaced their ability of find jobs. Still, this problem may be temporary because the service sector where female employment is most common and where the value added per worker is greater than in the rest of the economy is growing faster than other sectors.

Islam and Economic Performance: Historical and Contemporary Links

“…But the trend is upwards for female managers in the 25 to 50 age bracket. The rapid expansion of education opportunities beyond the middle and upper classes in the first quarter-century of the Islamic Republic has increased the supply of educated women who qualify for professional positions(Bahramitash and Esfahani 2009).…”

The Impact of Sanctions and Neo-Liberalism on Women’s Organising in Iran

“…The revolution empowered a generation of working class and middle class women in Iran and the new state provided them with both 'material and ideological resources' ( [9], p. 136). For example, campaigns of Islamisation and gender segregation undertaken by the new state encouraged women's participation in the workforce in certain areas, which had previously been dominated by men, which eventually led to an increase in women's participation in the labour force and in education ( [15], p. 78; [16], p. 187).…”

Social Movements in Egypt and Iran

“…84 As a result, literacy rates increased dramatically, particularly among women, infant mortality rates fell and rates of poverty decreased. 85 Initially the government pursued a pro-natalist policy in the 1980s, encouraging married couples to have children; however, the economic realities of a booming population, combined with the pressures of rising inflation and unemployment brought about by the war and the US oil embargo, meant that this policy was abandoned by 1989. Throughout the 1990s the government distributed free contraceptives and embarked on a mass campaign of population control through mosques, educational institutions and the media.…”

“…Despite an initial drop in women entering the labour force after the revolution, due to the purging of women from professional jobs, the closing of universities and enforced gender segregation, economic and social reforms in the first decade of the Islamic Republic eventually led to an exponential increase in women's participation in the labour force and in education. 89 The Iran-Iraq war, which caused devastation in many areas of the country, left an enormous gap in the male workforce which had to be filled by women and also created female-headed households where women were the main breadwinners. 90 Ironically, gender segregation laws also encouraged women's entry into the workforce despite the fact that they were designed to promote traditional gender roles.…”

“…The Islamisation of society undertaken after the revolution had a number of contradictory effects and far from acting as a barrier to women's participation in the labour force and in education, resulted in encouraging it. 92 Islamisation of society also made female employment and schooling acceptable to socially conservative families who had previously discouraged women from entering the workforce during the shah's regime. A generation of urban working class and middle class religious women had been marginalised under the Pahlavi state, which ideologically restricted their access to secular education and employment and considered them backward for wearing the hijab.…”