Women and Work: Ideology Not Adjustment at Work in Iran

Abstract

The chapters in this book have concentrated on the explicit adjustment policies initiated by governments in response to the international financial restrictions imposed largely by western donors, or credit agencies. But it is important to note that both in these explicit terms and elsewhere there is a central ideological theme at work which helps render women’s work invisible and class them as unemployed, and obligated to perform domestic services.¹ The contention of this chapter is that such ideological constraints can, and do, impose limitations on women’s work which may be as restricting, if not more so, than economic ones. Female employment in Iran is a clear example, where despite a decade of war, massive carnage of young men and general call-up of all males over the age of twelve, there has been no rise in female employment and both in absolute and relative terms fewer women are participating in the labour market now than were fifteen years ago. This is all the more surprising since a stated policy of gender segregation at all levels should, at least in theory, have resulted in doubling employment opportunities for women working in the public and private sectors.² Furthermore, contrary to the Third World trend, delineated in the previous chapters of this book, both the health and education sectors have been expanding their total employment and their proportion of female employment.