Iranian women’s rights remain hostage to political infighting

FT.com

In the female-only carriage of Tehran underground, about half a dozen women peddlers elbow their way through the crowd shouting, “colourful pyjamas!”, “eye-pencils and mascaras” and “woman-designed bras”.

One of the hawkers, Mina, 26, has a master's degree in commercial management but has been unable to find a job.

“I ask myself almost every day when I come to the metro station whether I will ever find a decent job,” she says, hiding her face behind a pollution mask so that friends will not recognise her.

Mina is not alone. Although 60 per cent of Iranian university students are female, unemployment of women under 25 stands at 42.3 per cent – almost double the country’s average for youth.

The fate of women like Mina is caught up in Iran’s political tug of war between the new government of Hassan Rouhani and conservatives. As the country celebrates Women’s Week – commemorating the birth of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed – the contradictions on whether women should be mothers or have equal rights and responsibilities to men have been laid bare.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader and ultimate decision maker, said over the weekend that women’s unemployment was not a primary concern. “The main issue [for women] is the family [foundation], particularly health, security and peace of women in the family,” he said.

The comments came as Es’haq Jahangiri, the pro-reform first vice-president, was telling a gathering of women that their unemployment was a “serious threat” and a priority for the government.

The Islamic regime maintains an uneasy position on women’s status. On the one hand, clerical rule over the past decades has assured conservative families that their girls are secure if they wish to have a university education, sparking a rise in female graduates.

But the regime has been also been reluctant to appoint women to senior government posts – other than a handful of exceptions, such as the vice-presidents for environment and women’s affairs, as well as a former health minister – seen as too few by many women.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report of 2013 ranked Iran 130th out of 136 countries for women’s economic participation and opportunity and 129 for political empowerment.

Analysts believe ruling conservatives have political as well as religious reasons for obstructing women’s rights. Women have been the main backers of reformist politicians over the past two decades and by keeping them disappointed by pro-reform governments, clerics may be hoping that they will undermine women’s support for moderates at the ballot box.

The contradictory attitude of the regime comes at a time when divorce is on the rise and marriage is declining as women refuse to have children and instead, according to official reports, say they want higher education and more senior jobs.

A report released on Tuesday said the rate of divorce had increased by 4.6 per cent in the Iranian year ending in March 2014 compared with the previous year. The marriage rate declined by 4.4 per cent over the same period.

However, an effective family planning policy – which earned Iran international plaudits for bringing down its population growth rate from 3.2 per cent in the early 1980s to 1.2 per cent in recent years – has been put on hold after Iran’s supreme leader warned against a declining birth rate.

Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament recently approved some measures, such as extending maternity leave – which contributes to women’s unemployment as about one-third of mothers are sacked by their employers when they return to work – and making labour free of charge in state-run hospitals to encourage women to have more children. It is also looking into a plan which would penalise abortion and vasectomy and prohibit any advertisement encouraging birth control.

The centrist government of Mr Rouhani – which is under attack by hardliners for its pro-reform cultural and social approaches – has yet to announce any specific policy to promote women’s role in society in a clear move to avoid conflict with its political opponents.

But it has quietly put some measures in place, including appointing some women as provincial governors, increasing the activities in women-related NGOs and removing restrictions on certain subjects in higher education – such as archaeology and some engineering degrees – which were ruled inappropriate for women under the previous president, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad.

“I confess . . . that many shortcomings exist with regard to women’s rights and the respect for gender justice in the country,” Mr Rouhani said over the weekend. “Is it possible to put half of the society in a corner and sideline them? Women must have equal opportunity, equal responsibility and equal social rights.”

In the meantime, women like Mina struggle on. She has earned an average of 8m rials ($313.63) per month since she started selling pyjamas and silver-plated earrings five months ago, far below what she would have expected with her level of education. Like the other women who peddle goods on the capital’s metro, she has little choice but to find an income wherever she can.

“We need this metro job to make ends meet,” says Sonia, a 20 high-school graduate who sells whatever she can to supplement her family’s income after the death of her father.