Iran: Women workers suffering under mullahs’ rule

Today’s world has witnessed significant developments and changes regarding women’s status and conditions in various aspects of our society. The increasing number of educated women, evolving knowledge and levels of learning have rendered a mounting demand for women’s presence in the job market. This development can be the source of widespread social and cultural changes. In Iran, however, it is an entirely different story.

Ruled by extremist mullahs, Iran is a country dealing with an unemployment tsunami where the salary of a male worker is less than one fourth of the government-set poverty line, and the system is ranked 138^th amongst 148 countries regarding workers’ salaries. The ruling elite have imposed a reactionary policy further restricting women’s participation in social affairs. According to official numbers women comprise 87% of Iran’s economically inactive population; the number of unemployed educated women have skyrocketed above 4 million; and in the past decade more than 100,000 women have been set aside from Iran’s job market each year. As a result of this trend, women’s participation in Iran’s economy barely reached a dismal 13%. Iran’s own official ISNA news agency wired a report on 18 September 2014 focusing on the unemployment phenomenon and admitting there is severe sexual discrimination in this regard in this country. The number of employed women in Iran decreased from 3.96 million in 2005 to around 3.14 million in 2013, the report added.

More troubling figures are provided in the remarks made by former Iranian MP Ms. Soheila Jelodarzadeh, indicating lack of job security is one of the main concerns of female workers in Iran. Over 2.5 million women seek to find adequate working conditions and are suffering in painstaking poverty, she said, adding 37 years after the mullahs came to power it is not clear women are permitted to work or not? Most of the women working as laborers, in economic corporations and production units lack any contracts. In rare conditions where there actually is a contract involved, it is only a matter of 1 to 3 months.

Most of the Iranian women busy working in workshops and factories across the country are unfortunately facing escalating discrimination and injustice in comparison to their male counterparts. We are talking about male workers who themselves are already deprived of their own paychecks for months.

“They should truly come and see how we live! It is very hard for a person not to receive a paycheck for 8 months! One can’t even pay for their daily food and is forced to borrow from others,” a female worker said in a state TV program aired on March 9^th.

Such major setbacks from today’s society have forced many female college graduates to resort to jobs such as working in bakeries, and resorting to working for paychecks equal to half, or even a third, of their male counterparts.

Unemployed women, seeking to barely make ends meet, are forced to flock into large cities such as Isfahan and work in harsh construction sites. Women are also seen working from 7 am to 7 pm in food production companies for just 1.6 million rials a month (equal to around $55). The question is how is a human being to live with just $55 a month? Iran is a country where the mullahs have imposed such economic hardship on the people, forcing families to actually rent off their children for $5 a day for God knows what purposes, and women even pre-selling their unborn babies.

Rampant unemployment, unbearable poverty and other such catastrophes, parallel to the climbing number of drug addicts and Iran’s prisons overwhelmed with hundreds of thousands men, have all forced women to singlehandedly strive to provide for their families. However, these caretakers can barely find a job in today’s Iran. Resorting to selling goods on the street is one of the last options left for women. In 2015 a whopping 82% of all female breadwinners were registered as unemployed, according to a senior regime figure.

Already suffering from an unprecedented recession, to add insult to injury, one third of female workers in Iran are systematically forced to quit their jobs after giving birth, according to deputy director of social services. In 2012 alone, 47,000 of the 145,000 pregnant women surveyed were fired from their job and were left with no choice but to seek unemployed insurance.

In today’s Iran, such disastrous conditions in labor families have forced women to resort to harsh and painful jobs. This is only the tip of the iceberg of the difficulties the regime has brought about for women workers in this country. Reactionary and misogynous laws crafted by the mullahs are plundering the already dismal paychecks these hardworking women receive in an unorderly fashion every now and then.

So much for changes and reforms in Iran.