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International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 16, No. 4, Summer 2003 (°
II. The Problematics of Globalization
Islamic Fundamentalism and Women’s
Economic Role: The Case of Iran
Roksana Bahramitash
It is commonly believed that Islamic fundamentalism is responsible for the
low female employment rate in the Middle East and North Africa. I earlier
presented evidence from Indonesia indicating that the deteriorating conditions of women’s economic role in the 1990s was related to the economic circumstances of the Asian Crisis, not to the rise of political Islam (Bahranitash,
2002). In fact, in Indonesia, increasing support for the Islamic movement was
itself spurred by the Asian Crisis. As a contrasting case, I here examine Iran,
a country where political Islam has been in power for over two decades. If
commonly held views about the impact of the Islamic religion on female employment were true, one would expect a steady or sharp decline of the female
employment rate in postrevolutionary Iran. The empirical data show the reverse. Women’s formal employment rates increased in the 1990s and did so
much faster than they had during the 1960s and 1970s, when a pro-Western
secular regime was in power. This sharp increase in women’s employment
seriously challenges the view that religion explains women’s economic status
in Muslim countries. The evidence from Iran indicates that the situation of
women’s employment there has followed a common pattern of elsewhere in
the South—an overall increase in female employment. This fact then suggests
that the forces of international political economy, rather than religion, appear to be a determining factor in the state of women’s economic role in Iran.
KEY WORDS: fundamentalism; Islamization; political Islam; Iran; Iranian women’s
employment; Islamic laws and women’s rights; economic liberalization.
In two companion articles, I examine stereotypical views about the position of women in the Muslim world. The first piece examined the case
of Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world (Bahramitash 2002).
Postdoctoral fellow at Simone de Beauvoir Institute, Concordia University, Annex MU
1455 de Maisonneuve West, MU 201-3, Montreal Quebec H3G 1M8, Canada. E-mail:
[email protected].
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This second part of the paper focuses on Iran, a country that overthrew a
Western-style modernizer dictator and replaced him with an Islamist regime.
What makes Iran an important case is that it is located in the Middle East, at
the core of the Muslim world. This region has different political, economic,
and social dynamics from Southeast Asia.
The Middle East and North Africa have exceptionally low female employment, which lends support to the stereotypical views. In this region, the
official rate varies from 13 percent in the United Arab Emirates and Oman
to 35 percent in Morocco. To provide the reader with a general picture at
the world level, in industrialized countries the employment rate for women
is around 40 to 46 percent; among the less-industrialized countries, the rates
in Southeast Asia are around 30 percent, in Sub-Saharan Africa between 40
and 50 percent, and in Latin America (with some exceptions, such as Peru)
above 30 percent (World Development Indicator 2001).
Muslim traditions can and, in many cases, do have a negative impact
if they are translated into law and social practice in a conservative way.
But that is true of virtually all religions. The difficulty is that such explanations can be simplistic, shifting the main focus of analysis from the material
to the ideological plane while reinforcing popular (usually very negative)
stereotypes.
The Fall of “Modernization” and the Rise of Political Islam
It is an established fact among scholars as well as policymakers that data
on female employment is highly problematic and tends to undercount real
participation rates. But even if the correctly measured participation rate is
relatively low in the Middle East and North Africa, the notion that this can be
attributed exclusively or even largely to theology is misleading. Looking at
the history of political economy of the past few decades provides evidence
that the fall of modernization and, more recently, of neoliberal economic
policy has played a huge role in the rise of political Islam. This point was
discussed in the previous paper on Indonesia, but in the case of Iran there
is an additional political factor involved related to the cold war.
After World War II, the United States led the West in a program of
“development” in an effort to head off the appeal of communism in the
South. The prevailing doctrine was “modernization”—meaning urbanization
and industrialization at the expense of agriculture and rural self-sufficiency.
The promise was that the application of the modernization model would
lead to prosperity, defined as access to western consumer goods and lifestyles.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, money and expertise flowed from the North
to the South to modernize/westernize both the economy and the society.
Also essential in many cases was the imposition of strong-arm regimes committed to imposing the essential changes in political and economic culture
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and to building and defending the essential infrastructure through which a
modernization-Westernization program could be built. By the late 1970s, it
was clearly a failure (Warren 1973; Wallerstein 1979; Cardoso and Faletto
1979). Poverty and income disparity grew, while industrialization did not
keep pace with urbanization and population growth. Policy makers in international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) blamed the failure on the role of the state in developing countries (Bhagwati and Desai 1970; Lal 1983; Little 1982). As a result, in the
1980s, these institutions shifted to an emphasis on limiting the role of the
state in economic life, cutting back public expenditure, particularly on social
welfare, and shifting resources from the domestic sector to repay the foreign
debts accumulated in the previous failed strategy (Elson 1995).
But there was a widespread backlash. There were efforts in many parts
of the South to defend and revive cultural and religious traditions as an alternative to the failed modernization model and in an effort to alleviate the
social and economic distress imposed by the new market fundamentalism.
In some Muslim countries, this alternative has taken the form of a return
to Islamic traditions in order to deal with the unsettling fruits of forced
modernization-Westernization (Beinin and Stork 1997). Indeed, this should
hardly have been a surprise to the West. In areas like Afghanistan (and,
where possible, in Soviet Central Asia) a Green Belt of “Islamic fundamentalism” was encouraged as a tool in the Cold War confrontation with the
USSR.1
Since the end of the cold war, with mainstream economic policy’s emphasis on unregulated markets and limiting the role of the state, poverty and
income disparity have been on the rise. Increased poverty has attracted many
to Islam throughout the Muslim world. Many women are extremely active
at the grass-roots level. Rising income disparity and poverty have increased
their total burden: women are often forced to scrape for monetary income
while at the same time assuming a larger workload in caring for family and
extended family in the absence of state support. It is not surprising to see
that the number of women who joined Hezbollah in Lebanon grow as the
state collapsed. Exchanging welfare assistance for their families for a return
of conservative Muslim tradition seems a low price to pay. In fact, it may not
be seen as a cost at all.2
But what exactly has Islamisation meant for women? This may be answered by looking at the more radical forms of Islam that developed in
Iran, Pakistan, and, more recently, Afghanistan. Though all three cases have
undergone Islamisation, the experiences of women have been far from homogenous and have changed over time. In the case of Iran, feminist agitation
has led to a gradual loosening of religious codes concerning women’s employment and their public role. In the case of Pakistan, a return to Shari’a
laws has had much less impact on women’s entry into the labour market than
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in Iran. Afghanistan is different from the other two because of its prohibition
of all public engagement by females. The case of Afghanistan remains very
enigmatic even to the religious leaders in that bastion of Islamisation, Iran.
While westerners denounce this latest manifestation of retrograde Islamic
fundamentalism, Iranian Ulamas, along with Ulamas from other parts of
the Muslim world, are constantly urging the Taliban regime to comply with
“Islam.” Many Ulamas point to the fact that the right to education, for example, is a religious duty spelled out in the Qur’an for men and women alike
(Wadud 1999). Therefore it must not be denied to women in Afghanistan.
It is difficult to resist the conclusion that Afghanistan is an aberration, precisely because its history and society are in many ways unique:
Afghanistan is a tightly knit, highly conservative, and, in many areas, tribal
society, in which massive poverty and poor communications with the outside
world have been the historical norm. Furthermore, the country is undergoing a violent backlash against the former Communist regime’s attempt to
enforce land redistribution and female emancipation. It currently faces not
simply the aftermath of two decades of war, still ongoing, but also a massive
drought. It is therefore highly questionable to isolate “Islam” alone as a
factor determining the position of women in law and practice.
In short, the position of women in the Muslim world must be looked
at as a continuum. On one end there are extremely conservative countries
that embrace Shari’a law in its most reactionary forms regarding the role of
women. At the other, there are those countries where either Shari’a laws
are greatly modified or are marginal to the legal system. Afghanistan is at
the former end, Tunisia, Morocco, and Turkey are at the other. In between
are places like Egypt , where the legal system has become the battleground
between traditional Islamists and progressive secularists (Badran 1995).
THE EXAMPLE OF IRAN
In subjecting the simple stereotype—that the rise of political Islam necessarily leads to a decline in women’s economic power—to critical scrutiny,
no better case can be found than Iran. Iran was the first country in the postWorld War II era in which political Islam was the rallying cry for a successful
revolution, followed by the new state formally adopting political Islam as its
ruling ideology. Iran, too, has assisted the spread of political Islam to other
countries. Finally, because the Islamic Revolution occurred there more than
two decades ago, Iran provides us with ample time for an examination of the
effects of a political program of deliberate and systematic Islamisation with
particular reference to the trends in female employment. To examine those
trends, this paper breaks the period under review into three components.
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The first, to create a comparative basis, is the situation that prevailed during
the systematic modernization program introduced by the Shah in the early
1960s. The second (1979–1989) covers the period when the revolutionary
regime consolidated itself while at the same time engaging in a massive program to mobilize national resources for war. The third period (1990 to the
present) saw a partial retreat of the state from the economy and a limited
opening to the principles of economic liberalization.
The Shah’s Accelerated Modernization: 1960–1979
As indicated in Figure One, from 1960 until the revolution, there was
a general increase in female employment. This period is marked by the
Shah’s modernization, one of the best-known facets of which was the White
Revolution in 1962.3 One important outcome of the Shah’s modernization
was an increase in female employment, particularly in the urban areas.
Interpreting data on employment of women in the rural economy during this period is a major problem. Many women worked as unpaid family
Fig. 1. Female Employment Trend in Iran.
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workers and men were regarded as the head of the household. Therefore,
what women produced became part of male output, and thus outside of enumeration. Furthermore, the rural sector includes not just women engaged in
planting, weeding, picking, and harvesting of products such as tea and cotton,
but also in endeavors such as carpet weaving. In fact, it is still a woman’s job to
spin and dye, then weave the yarn. Cloth or carpets were and still are mainly
handed over to male members of the family for trade (Beck 1978:358–60).
Some 70 percent of all cloth weaving was done by women and 72 percent of
carpet weaving was done in the rural sector, 90 percent of that by women
(Halliday 1979:191–93). Furthermore, although it was the Shah’s policy to
settle nomads, among those who remained nomadic and pastoralist, things
such as milk processing, preparation of animal
Female Labour as a Percentage of Total Female
Population
Year
Female Labour % of Total Female
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1993
1995
1998
17.9
18.45
19
19.7
20.4
20.6
21.2
23
24.2
25.94
World Development Indicator 2001
derivatives, caring for animals, fuel gathering, baking bread, and weaving,
spinning, and dyeing yarn remained women’s jobs without being counted in
the data (Poya 1999:45–47).
These trends were reinforced by developments in the petroleum sector.
At the start of the White Revolution, Iran was a fairly small producer of
oil. But by 1970, it was the second largest producer in the OPEC group,
its finances critically dependent on oil revenues. The rapidly rising revenues from oil were ploughed into capital-intensive industries (Moghadam
1995:176). As in other places in the world, in Iran capital-intensive industries
draw largely on male labour. Therefore, to the extent industrialization did
occur, it tended to exacerbate the gender gap.
In the service sector, however, female employment grew quickly, much
faster than in any other sector of the economy. With the expansion of education, many women entered fields like teaching, nursing, and clerical work.
In fact, 43 percent of teachers during this period were women, along with
44 percent of clerical workers and 11 percent of medical and paramedical
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personnel (Halliday 1979:191–93). The fact that such jobs were paid (unlike
much rural labour) explains, in part, the steady increase in female labour
indicated in during this period.
Nevertheless, women constituted a huge part of those who joined the
Islamicists in rallying against the Shah. The reasons for this apparent paradox
go straight to the heart of the problem of the Shah’s modernization, which
ultimately provided a fertile ground for the rise of political Islam (Bayat
2000).
There were many reasons for the rising support for the Ayatolla
Khomeini. Rural poverty sent peasants to urban areas. Industrialization was
not growing fast enough to provide employment or prosperity for the urban
poor (Momeni 1977). The new urban poor were both disappointed in their
hopes for affluence and culturally alienated by the growing consumer economy in which they could not share.4 Shantytowns grew on the margins of
cities such as Tehran and the state was unable to provide basic services such as
clean water and electricity. While education and health care had improved in
Iran, much as they had in Indonesia under Suharto and the Philippines under
Marcos, increasing income disparity and a rising population of urban poor
alongside the growing ability of the upper class to mimic Western lifestyles
brought major discontent among the masses. Furthermore, the much-touted
land reform of the White Revolution had left many farmers impoverished
and driven up Iran’s dependence on foreign imports of food.
At the same time, the Shah had become politically much more ruthless.
All political activities, from forming a political party to publishing newspaper articles and books were subject to heavy suppression. Torture and
imprisonment of dissidents became commonplace. The Iranian secret police
(SAVAK, trained by the Israeli Mossad) along with an army trained by
Americans were the backbone of his power (Ebtekar 2000). In addition,
the Shah created his own guard javid (“eternal army”) to safeguard his
position.
In view of the evident failure of a Westernization-modernization built
around land reform and industrialization, neither of which achieved anything close to their declared objectives, there was a quest for an alternative.
At the same time among many leftist activists, the prospect of a Communist insurrection seemed increasingly remote and, of course, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan did little to increase its attractiveness. At the same
time, the Americans began a concerted if covert effort to combat the spread
of communism through the creation of a Green Belt, namely an Islamicist movement on the frontiers of the Soviet Union. Concurrently, inspired
by the Algerian anticolonial struggle, thinkers like Ali Shariati preached a
revolutionary interpretation of Islam in Iran. Shariati stressed the role of
Islam as a religion of social justice (Sullivan 2000: 239). This new
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interpretation of Islam accommodated the political ideas necessary to mobilise people, particularly the young and the educated, against the repression
and social injustices of the Shah.5
It was under such conditions that many women joined the Islamicist
movement. Indeed, granting women the right to vote was meaningless when
neither men’s nor women’s vote had any impact in the context of the Shah’s
monarchy. Many female activists were imprisoned and tortured. Much as had
Marcos and Suhrato, the Shah created a National Women’s Organization
that was representative of upper- and middle-class women only.6 Women
from low-income families who respected tradition were marginalised by
an atmosphere that strongly discouraged veiled women from entering certain
public places where middle- and upper-class women gathered.7
In the late 1970s, many women from an educated, middle-class background joined the Islamist movement, some of them in response to Ali
Shariati and others who preached about an Islamic model based on a general concept of social justice (Abrahamian 1982:464–73, Sullivan 2000:239).
While SAVAK continued to torture feminist activists and repressed any
feminist organization not associated with those created by the state (Bahar
1983), Khomeini tempered the reactionary position he had taken in the 1960s
vis-à-vis the role of women and began to appeal equally to men and women.
He stressed the importance of female mobilization, therefore earning the
support of many women.
The Islamic Republic and the State-Controlled Economy:
from 1979 Until the End of the War with Iraq in 1988
With increased political tension, Khomeini finally was able to unify the
opposition against the Shah and finally force him to leave the country. With
the Shah’s departure, his provisional government soon collapsed, paving the
way for the 1979 Islamic Republic to come into power with overwhelming support shown through popular vote. However, after the new Islamicist
regime consolidated its power, it moved away from its original position of
attempting to unite all opposition forces and became the exclusive preserve
of those who followed the Ayatollah’s line. This shift had serious implications for the position of women. The new Islamic state gradually adopted an
increasingly conservative religious interpretation of the role of women, and
excluded them from the social and political mainstream, even though the
regime had been brought into power with women’s massive support. Therefore the new regime soon marginalized all women’s groups except those
that adhered strictly to religious codes spelled out by Ayatollah Khomeini
(Paidar 1995).
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Under the new Islamicist ideology, women came to be viewed primarily,
if not exclusively, as mothers, and their main place was to be the home. This
was stressed in the new Constitution. The state reversed all legal reforms
which had favoured women during the Shah’s regime and replaced them
with laws in accordance with its orthodox interpretation of “Islam.” The ideal
image for a woman became that of the daughter of the Prophet Mohamad,
Fatimah (Darrow 1985). Other images of women were dismissed as Western.
Women were banned from certain professions; for example, they could not
practise law, either as judges or lawyers (Afshar 1996). Certain subjects at
the university level, such as civil engineering, were closed to women.
These changes in women’s status and legal position were far more serious for women from the upper and middle classes, for those who were from
an educated urban background than for low-income urban, rural, and tribal
women. The Shah had directed his efforts for the advancement of women
particularly at those of the upper and middle classes. Under the new regime,
however, many women who had held positions of prestige were either forced
to leave their jobs or were made very uncomfortable if they held on to them
(Poya 1999). One of the factors that created a problem for women was the
imposition of an Islamic dress code, the hejab. It was precisely rejection of
the dress code that led many women of upper- and middle-class background
to leave their jobs.
There were other reasons for the disproportionate setback for upperand middle-class women in the field of employment. Many low-income families in either urban or rural areas relied heavily on the income that women
brought in, and a change of state ideology or dress code could not force these
women out of their jobs as easily as it did for the other classes. In addition,
certain industries could not survive without high female participation. For
instance, it would be unimaginable to think that the new regime could ban
women from the agricultural sector.
Thus, the overall impact of state policy did not do much to force women
out of the labour market as might be expected at first glance—in fact, indicates a gradual increase. It should be noted, however, that there are discrepancies between national and international data on female employment in
Iran put out by Iran’s Statistical Yearbook and World Development Indicator. The national data show a far lower employment rate than international
data gathered by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva,
where far more elaborate data processing methods were applied. The ILO,
where there is a great awareness of the problem of underreporting female
employment, often goes beyond relying only on national data by conducting
small-scale surveys to get a more accurate picture of female employment.8
(Using international data also provides a point of reference to better compare Iran with other countries.)
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Islamic Republic: State Withdrawal from the Economy After 1988
The question is, then, why, in spite of state policies that defined women’s
major role as mothers and homemakers and targeted upper- and middleincome women for discriminatory treatment, was there a steady increase in
the percentage of formal employment among women? The answer lies in an
increase of employment for women from lower-income groups. This is not
to suggest that the state was committed to expanding opportunities for lowincome women. In the period after the revolution, state policy discouraged
women from employment outside the home, regardless of their social class.
However, with the invasion by Iraq in 1981 and the simultaneous imposition
of economic sanctions against Iran, two important processes occurred. As
the economy went into recession and rising inflation eroded people’s real
income, those at the bottom of the social ladder suffered the most (Behdad
1995, Moghadam 1995). The drop in disposable income made it progressively
more difficult for many families to remain reliant on a single income-earner.
Increasingly, many women had to seek employment for their families’ survival. In effect, poverty, war, and economic sanctions led to increased female
labour-force participation, in spite of the efforts and ideology of the regime.
War and the reduction of state revenue due to falling oil prices also
forced the Islamicist regime to relay on women’s volunteer work. Khomeini
himself called for religious women to become involved in supporting the
revolution’s goal and to extend their support in order to subsidize two major
state concerns, the military and the welfare state. Indeed, the latter was the
very reason for which revolution had come about—the Islamicists appealed
to the Iranian masses because of the increasing income disparity and growing
numbers of absolute poor during the Shah’s regime. Hence, once again,
the Ayatollah appealed to women, this time to make the dreams of the
revolution come true and deal with the impact of an imposed war (Poya
1995:233). Over and over, Khomeini called for millions of Iranians, including
women, to join the Islamic Jihad (Holy Struggle) against poverty and social
deprivation: he named their collective effort “the army of 20 million” (artesh
bist milliony). In response, many women, a great number from low-income
and traditional families, engaged in various activities in order to help the
state. They participated en masse in social welfare programs, particularly for
the families of those who died during the revolution and the war.
Jihad helped inspire other organizations. For instance, jihad sazandegy (Reconstruction Struggle) and Bassije (mass mobilization effort) were
designed to address a host of issues other than poverty and welfare. Jihad
sazandegy mobilized many devoted Muslim women to help rebuild the rural
economy as part of their religious duty to build an Islamic nation. Also in the
context of the rural economy, many women got involved in activities such
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as setting up local cooperatives to alleviate the impact of both war and economic sanctions. Similarly Bassije Khaharan (Sister’s Moblization Effort)
brought many women together in an effort to make food and clothing for
soldiers. Many of these women were trained in basic first aid and were sent
to hospitals to deal with staff shortages.
Khomeini had also made a nationwide commitment to eradicate illiteracy. This brought masses of women into local mosques as volunteers to
educate illiterate women. The literacy campaign became far more successful
than that of the Shah with far fewer funds, because female teachers were
volunteers and many traditional families welcomed the campaign (Mehran
1999). Since Khomeini made literacy a religious duty for men and women
equally, few husbands could prevent their wives from going to the local
mosques for education even if they had so wished. The benefits of the successful literacy campaign were twofold. On the one hand, the literacy rate
among women increased; on the other, many religious women working as
volunteers took an increasingly public role, particularly as the literacy campaign branched into others such as military training for women. The literacy
campaign in itself provided increased skills for many women, preparing them
for different types of employment.
As important and as varied as women’s volunteer work was during this
period, it was never taken into account in official labour-force data. Such a
massive omission of the volunteer aspect of women’s work obviously helps
explain why, in the official numbers on female employment grow so slowly,
despite the massive involvement of women in the economy.
This slow growth of employment opportunities applied not just to
women. Rather, it was a more general result of state policy. During the
1980s, the new regime was heavily interventionist. Nationalization of many
private companies, especially those owned by the Shah and his supporters, led to serious problems with lack of proper management and trained
staff who had been forced out of their jobs by the Islamicists. In addition to the lack of competence of state officials, the same type of corruption that existed during the Shah’s rule started to reappear among
functionaries of the new regime and among cadres of the Islamicist organizations in charge of running nationalized enterprises. Furthermore, economic
sanctions against Iran disrupted imports of raw materials and caused a fall
in general productivity. For all of these reasons the economy went into a
nosedive during the 1980s and both male and female employment suffered.
The war with Iraq ended in 1988 and one year later Ayatollah Khomeini
died. These two events marked the beginning of a new era. In the early 1990s,
the old strategy of economic nationalism, import substitution, and inwardlooking economic planning gave way to a more outward-looking, openmarket economy (Salehi-Isfahani 1999). Furthermore, as the war ended,
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the state began to view foreign capital as a potential source of investment.
During the 1980s, Iran had attempted to avoid foreign debts, but by the late
1980s and early 1990s, borrowing from external creditors accelerated. Along
with the increased attempts to attract foreign capital came a deliberate policy of withdrawing the state from the economy, something the end of the
war further encouraged. With the reduction of the role of the developmentalist state came a move towards privatization, deregulation, and further
devaluation of the riyal (Behdad 1995). As part and parcel of the neoliberal
economic policy guidelines, the same type which all debtor states subject to
World Bank and IMF dictates must follow, the Iranian government also had
to back off from its earlier commitment to the expansion of the welfare state.
However, this new, more liberal policy orientation actually increased
the participation rate for women. Reconstruction boosted labour demand
in general and for women in particular. At the same time feminist agitation
had slowly forced the state to change its initial antagonistic position toward
female employment outside the home and against women’s participation
in the public arena. Many women fought hard to bring about changes—
interestingly enough, a large number of those challenging the authorities
were from the Islamicist movement itself. These Islamicist feminist activists
were in some cases much more effective in taking the authorities to task than
secular ones, since they could use Muslim doctrine and religious interpretations as the basis of their grievances. For example, these women were able to
force a law which enabled women to demand wages for housework in 1992
(Hoodfar 1999).9 Part of the strength of the Isalmicist women’s movement
came from the fact that so many of its members had worked sincerely for
the goals of the revolution.
Their plea was effective. Once women made public the facts about their
huge sacrifices, it seemed only fair and “Islamic” for them to want to be
treated with justice. As self-consciousness grew, women became more defiant
of discriminatory practices by the Islamic Republic. For instance, widows of
the revolution and the war made demands from the state for access to higher
education and employment to compensate their losses (Zaneh Rouz 2000).
Many young, often educated women who had followed the Ayatollah and
volunteered to marry handicapped war veterans (and provide them with fulltime nursing care) pressed for recognition of their unpaid work. Thus, these
volunteer women who had given so much support to the Islamic regime
slowly grow reluctant to continue their services for free while their male
counterparts were paid. They demanded, and sometimes forced their way
into paid positions. As a result, Islamacist institutions that had been created
during the early part of the revolution such as Jihad sasandegi increasingly
employed those who were either from the families of veterans of the war
and revolution or had served as volunteers.
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Furthermore, feminist agitation has gained ground for female employment in the professions that the revolutionary state in the late 1970s and
the early 1980s had closed to women (Kian 1985). As an example, pressure
on the state finally forced the judiciary to allow women to become lawyers
and judges (Afshar 1996). As the state was forced to relax strict religious
codes over the issue of female employment, Iran’s need for skilled labour
brought back many of those upper- and middle-class women, particularly
teachers and nurses, who at the outset of the revolution had left or were
forced out of the labour force. A huge need for teachers, especially at the
primary level, produced a great demand for women. At the same time the
percentage of highly educated women increased—it currently exceeds that
of men (52 percent of those who entered university were women by 1999)
(Poya 1999:106.) The increase in the percentage of highly educated women
and feminist agitation in turn has had further feedback into the system, as
illustrated by the increasing number of female journalists highly critical of
the regime. (The percentage of female journalist has increased by far from
that in the 1970s during the Shah’s regime.) Female journalists have been
the first to organize themselves along professional lines—Iran’s anjomae
senfye roznamehe negarane zan (female journalists association) became the
country’s first independent union. At the same time, with the opening of
the economy and the increase in the relative size of the private sector, the
demand for administrative jobs has increased and many women have found
employment in the private sector, particularly in the expanding service sector. Finally, the Islamic Republic’s idea of sexual segregation has actually
led to an expansion of certain jobs for women. For instance, at the university
level, women have been encouraged to become pediatricians and gynecologists, while men have been discouraged from these medical specialities. The
idea of seclusion also has increased the percentage of women in other jobs,
such as taxi driver. Recently twelve taxi agencies have been set up in the
holy city of Mashhad; staffed and managed entirely by women, they employ
200 female taxi drivers who own their cars and are provided with cell phones
(Zaneh Rouz 2001).
However, the real percentage increase of female employment is not reflected fully in the official data. There has been an expansion of the urban,
informal economy. Like other parts of the world where neoliberal policies
are implemented, inflation, deregulation, and privatization have meant rising prices of basic goods, exacerbating poverty and income disparity. At
the same time, the decline in state subsidies and social care programs have
forced more women to seek employment, many in the informal economy.
Expansion of the informal economy and sexual segregation have led to a
growth in the number of women who work at home in vocations where their
clients are women. The number of female, home-based, income-generating
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activities—hairdressers, seamstresses, food processors, and prostitutes and
beggars—has increased (Afshar 1999).
Furthermore, the official data understate the amount of female employment because they neglect all non-remunerated work, not simply household
but also community work. In Iran in recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in the amount of volunteer-community work done by women,
not this time because of women heeding the call of the religious authorities but because of the impact of the new liberalization program. As the
state’s ability to deliver social welfare services has decreased, there has been
more pressure for women to take up the slack (Poryamin et al. 2001). As a
result, there are now neighbourhood organizations run by women to deal
with issues such as environmental problems. For example, many women are
engaged in recycling campaigns. In Iran, as almost everywhere in the world,
the fact that many women are involved in community work designed to improve the quality of human life is overlooked in official data: since this work
carries no dollar signs, it is not officially regarded as “work.”
In spite of all the barriers to women, paid female employment has increased. This runs counter to the common stereotypical assumption associating the rise of political Islam and with a decrease in paid employment for
women. During the rule of the Shah and his secular policies, the percentage
of women’s employment increased only very slowly. It did not change during
the decade that followed the establishment of the Islamic Republic, although
its class composition may have altered. The same slow growth continued until the second phase of the Islamic Republic, when the employment rate for
women accelerated sharply. If the Muslim religion is the explanatory factor
for low female employment in the Middle East and North Africa, one would
expect a fall of the employment rate below that of the Shah’s period, not a
sharp increase.
Rather than think of the trends in employment as reflecting “Islam,” it
makes much more sense to compare them to general trends throughout the
world (Anker 1998). Across the South, there are serious barriers to women’s
paid employment. In some countries the situation is improving; in some it
is getting worse. Yet even where paid employment is rising for women, it
does not translate automatically into an improvement in the standard of living or economic decision-making power. Rising formal employment in the
South has take place simultaneously with an increase in the general level
of poverty among women due to the imposition of neoliberal and market
fundamentalist policies by the IMF and the World Bank (Bhatta 2001). It
would appear that the most dangerous type of fundamentalism is not religious but market “fundamentalism,” which continues to plague the lives of
an increasing number of women from the South, exacerbating poverty and
political instability and, in turn, feeding into radical religious movements.
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Any growing power of political Islam is more a result that a cause of this
phenomenon; even where it assumes power, the experience of women is
neither immutable within any country nor consistent across countries.
CONCLUSION
Reviewing Iran’s empirical evidence indicates a steady increase in
female employment trends during the past two decades since the Islamic
revolution. This overall increase, particularly since the 1990s, has been much
more impressive than during the previous secular, pro-Western regime. Data
on Iran contradict commonly held views about the impact Islam has had on
female participation rates in the Middle East. In fact, the rise of political
Islam broke the barriers to participation in public life that had previously
existed for women, especially those of lower socioeconomic background.
A close review of the way in which the Islamacist movement relied on
women’s political mobilization reveals the fact that women in general and
those from the lower classes in particular were brought into the public domain as part of a revolutionary interpretation of Islamic religious doctrine.
It was Khomeini’s call for women to come to street marches first and then to
take part en masse in volunteer mobilizations that augmented women’s public presence in Iranian society. The overwhelming participation of women
in Khomeini’s different jihads, particularly the jihad to fight illiteracy, was
path-breaking for many women of the lower classes and for peasants. The
success of the jihad for literacy along with public education has been an important factor in high female educational attainment in more recent years
and as well as for their rising employment rate.
For almost a decade after the early stages of the revolution, the government was very much committed to welfare for all. Food and housing
subsidies, as well as public education and health care continued as long
as Khomeini was alive. But with the Ayatollah’s death and the election of
Hashemi Rafsanjani to the presidency of Iran, neoliberal policies replaced
those of the welfare state of the Khomeini years. This marked a new era; in
the late 1980s, when President Rafsanjani came to power, open-market policies led to economic measures such as devaluation of the currency (which
increased the cost of living for the poor), privatization (which left many
workers unprotected), and the decline of social services, all of which forced
many women to enter the labour market. Some of these women, who previously had worked on a volunteer basis, could no longer afford to maintain
their families without being paid. Rising poverty and the decline of the welfare state has resulted in an acceleration of the growth of formal as well as
informal employment for women since the 1990s. However, although there
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has been a remarkable increase in female employment, there may be little to
celebrate in this since the increase in the employment rate, similar to that of
the rest of the Third World, is not necessarily an indication of improving economic conditions for women. Data on employment for women throughout
the South indicate a steady increase of female employment. In fact, since the
1980s, with the increase in world trade and expansion of the market economy, more women in the South are employed, but this increase has been
accompanied by a concomitant increase in female poverty. According to the
Human Development Report 1997, out of 1.3 billion people who live on
less than a dollar a day, 70 percent are women, and the rate is on the rise.
Therefore, although the proportion of women who work for pay and outside
their home has increased, this increase is not automatically an indication of
improving conditions for women in the Third World. Iran, in that respect,
is just like any other Third World country. This suggests that international
forces of political economy and free-market policies may be more important than Islamic religion in explaining changes in female employment in
Iran.
ENDNOTES
1. Similarly, in Occupied Palestine, Israel initially encouraged the growth of Hamas to undermine the support previously given overwhelmingly to the PLO—a fact which makes
the current situation, in which Hamas has been taking the lead in the intifada, particularly
ironic.
2. This is certainly the opinion of various scholars, including Andrea Becker and Homa
Hoodfar who worked in the Shia’ slum areas around Beirut (Interviews, Montreal, 1999–
2000).
3. The White Revolution was a package of policy guidelines designed to facilitate the transition from an agrarian to an industrial/modern economy. The fundamental basis of the
package was an attempt at land reform imposed by the central government in order to head
off a possible peasant uprising. The White Revolution (also called the Shah and People’s
Revolution) was meant to give the impression of revolutionary change, while ensuring that
the government remained fully in control of the course of events.
4. As I remember vividly, during this period the slogan was, “each Iranian must have a car.”
5. For many of us—middle-class, educated, young women—Shariati and his lectures in the
Hoseynieh Ershad Mosque held a special appeal. We admired his courage as well as his
message and his knowledge. He managed to combine both the traditionalist and the modernist trends.
6. The Shah himself did not have a very high opinion of women: in an interview with Italian
journalist Oriana Fallaci, he had criticised the notion of female equality (1976). His reforms,
therefore, were not a genuine attempt to bring equality for women, but rather an effort to
westernize Iranian women.
7. In fact, for my own wedding, which was held in the Tehran Army club, it was written on the
invitation card that veiled women were not allowed to attend. As the result, some members
of my family were sent back home.
8. Interview with previous head of ILO statistical bureau, Dr. Mehran.
9. According to this law, a man who intends to divorce his wife without proving fault on her
part must first pay housework wages for the duration of marriage.
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