The politics of women and work in Iran

A growing body of studies has noted the persistence of low levels of women’s paid employment in Iran. ¹ According to the 2006 Iranian population census (1385 by the Iranian lunar Islamic calendar), only 3.6 million women were employed, compared with 23.5 million men; women constituted just 16 percent of the non-agricultural paid labor force, and the highest urban female labor force participation rate was 23 percent for women aged twenty-five to twenty-nine. World Bank data for 2010 set the labor force participation rate of Iranian women at just 32 percent—up from 20 percent in 1980 and 29 percent in 2000 but still quite low by international standards. In 2015, the figures for female labor force participation and waged employment had not changed. ² In contrast, women’s educational attainment has rapidly increased since the 1990s, with high enrollments and graduation rates at the secondary levels (over 80 percent by 2011); women’s enrollment rates at the tertiary level doubled between 1999 and 2011 to about 45 percent, and in most years exceeded men’s enrollments (Islamic Republic of Iran, 2013).