Roji kurd: With more than one in three university-educated Iranian women unemployed, an international rights group says females face widespread discrimination and other obstacles in the workplace as Iran continues to lag in gender-equality reports.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says in its May 25 report, It’s A Men’s Club, that Tehran needs serious legal and social reforms to reverse the negative trend for women — who only make up 17 percent of Iran’s workforce — and enable them to take part in the country’s burgeoning economic opportunities.
The report notes that Iran’s percentage of women workers is below the Middle East and North African region’s average of 20 percent — the lowest of any region in the world.
The report also says: “
Women in Iran confront an array of legal and social barriers, restricting not only their lives but also their livelihoods, and contributing to starkly unequal economic outcomes. Although women comprise over 50 percent of university graduates, their participation in the labor force is only 17 percent. The 2015 Global Gender Gap report, produced by the World Economic Forum, ranks Iran among the last five countries (141 out of 145) for gender equality, including equality in economic participation. Moreover, these disparities exist at every rung of the economic hierarchy; women are severly underrepresented in senior public positions and as private sector managers. This significant participation gap in the Iranian labor market has occurred in a context in which Iranian authorities have extensively violated women’s economic and social rights. Specifically, the government has created and enforced numerous discriminatory laws and regulations limiting women’s participation in the job market while also failing to stop – and sometimes actively participating in – widespread discriminatory employment practices against women in the private and public sectors.”
The HRW report says that, although the Iranian economy received a boost in July 2015 when Tehran signed a nuclear agreement with six world powers that ended many international sanctions and freed up billions of dollars in revenue for the government, it hasn’t translated into progress for Iranian women despite a pledge by President Hassan Rohani that “all Iranians” would benefit from the deal.
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