Introduction

This article provides an analysis of women’s work (paid, unpaid and voluntary) and their contribution to the economy in Iran since the 1979 revolution and the Islamisation of the state and other institutions. The emphasis is on two important but relatively under researched issues:

1) Women's work in Iran is determined by state ideology, local and global economic circumstances and gender relations.
2) Despite strict ideological rules and structural limitations on women's work, in the context of Shia Islam, women in Iran have shown a great deal of courage, imagination and commitment to struggle for their gender interests. They have challenged gender construction of work dictated by the patriarchal institutions such as the state, family, education, employment, parliament, media…

As will be discussed in this paper, the oil economy, Import Substitution Industrialisation and state intervention led to Economic and Human Development. The Islamic state encouraged women’s participation in politics in its own favour. The combination of Economic and Human Development and women’s participation in politics and economy made apparent the limitations and the contradictions of the Islamic state and ideology.

Therefore, I will argue that the interaction between economic and ideological factors led to gender consciousness and women's struggle for change. Contrary to Islamophobia and the popular view in the West that women in Muslim societies are oppressed because of Islamic ideology, the level of female employment, education, health and gender consciousness in Iran is much greater in 2005, under the Islamic state, than they were at the height of Westernisation and modernisation in the 1960s and 1970s.

Since the 1990s, a strong women’s movement has struggled for gender equality within the democracy movement in Iran. These struggles are taking place according to their cultural needs and not according to neo-liberal and neo-conservative agendas. Therefore, I will argue that the subordination of women is universal but takes different forms. In Muslim societies the oppression of women cannot be attributed solely to Islamic ideology and practice. It has to be analysed within a wider perspective, which involves material circumstances arising from local and global circumstances and change in gender relations.

The literature on women in Iran has concentrated on culture, identity and politics. The works of Afshar, Hoodfar, Mir-Hosseini, Najmabadi, Paidar, and Tohidi [1] are of particular value, as they emphasise the importance of women’s agency and identity and contribute to our understanding of women’s issues in Iran. Others, such as Mojab and Moghissi, [2] make the assumption that Islamic religion and ideology marginalise women in economy and society. There are two approaches to women and the economy in Iran. In my analysis of Women and Work in Iran, [3] I have argued that women’s contribution to the formal state sector and private sector of the economy is important. However, we cannot ignore the contribution of home workers, petty commodity producers and those who are engaged in subsistence production, even if they are not included in the statistics and national income. In this context the work of Kian and Bahramitash [4] and their analysis of women and work are extremely valuable.

However, Moghadam’s analyses of women’s work in Iran and the Middle East and North Africa, [5] suffer from a functionalist approach. Despite decades of feminist criticisms of functionalist approaches to women and work, [6] Moghadam ignores the paid, unpaid and voluntary work of women in the informal sector of the economy i.e. the contribution of a large number of women to the economy as a whole. She claims that her approach is Marxist and Structuralist. [7] However, despite Marxist, Liberal and Feminist criticisms of neo-liberalism and globalisation, she ignores the fact that globalisation can proceed with a higher degree of state intervention and with the provision of social welfare for the poor and the disadvantaged. [8] She argues that globalisation and forces of neo-liberalism would eventually dominate over the reproduction of traditional patterns of patriarchal gender relations globally. She ignores women’s struggle for change through reforms of laws and regulations in the Middle East and North Africa, especially in Iran, and wrongly assumes that conformity to the forces of neo-liberalism will lead to an increase in women’s participation in the labour force and other institutions. [9]

The analysis of women’s agency, changing gender identities, and of women’s capacity to contest oppressive practices at work and other institutions which are missing from Moghadam’s analyses, have enabled me to evaluate women’s contribution to the economy and society through paid, unpaid and voluntary work.

There are parts in this paper that have been published before; [10] most have been revised in order to integrate them into the present article.

The analysis of this paper is based on field research data in two stages. The first stage includes primary sources: eighty interviews between 1989 and 1992 with women of various occupations; five hundred questionnaires which were distributed in 1990 and collected in 1991 and 1992 and a group interview with eight men and women in 1996. The second stage, the field research, included 50 interviews from 1999 to 2004. The research data also included secondary materials, such as volumes of official statistics, press reports, legislation, and published and unpublished research on women and work in Iran and in general.

This article is divided into six sections. In section one I discuss the conceptual framework that contextualises this paper. Section two is a brief reminder of gender and economy in the pre 1979 era, under the secular pro West Pahlavi state. Section three will discuss the first phase of Islamisation (1979-1981) and the Islamic state’s initial gender and employment policy. Section four analyzes the impact of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) on women’s work and the contradictions of state policies. Section five will discuss women and work in the 1990s, the impact of post war reconstruction and women’s struggle for change. In section six I will discuss women and work in 2000–2005. In that section, I will discuss the impact of global economic policy on Iran – a move towards privatisation and NGOisation – and on women’s work. In this context I will assess the paid and voluntary work of a large number of women in the private sector of the economy, both formal and informal, and in Non-Governmental Organisations.

I. Conceptual Framework

The specifics of women and work in Iran suggest that it is important to review the discourses of women, work and the economy through the lens of the sexual division of labour, in the formal and informal sectors of the economy. The aim is to make women’s work and women’s contribution to the economy visible.

A review of the literature on sexual division of labour and formal and informal sectors reveals three inter-related issues:
1. A clear-cut division of labour by sex exists in all countries, even though what are considered to be male or female tasks varies considerably across countries. [11]
2. The boundary between informal labour and formal labour is not clear cut. [12]
3. There is a relationship between the sexual division of labour associated with informal labour (engaged in social reproduction, housework, subsistence and petty commodity production) and the division of labour in paid production work (formal labour). Furthermore, informal labour is not simply a vestige of pre-capitalist forms but a structural feature of capitalist accumulation. [13]

The rigid classification of formal/informal sectors refers to the labour market and not the economy. [14] The informal sector of the economy is as important as the formal sector of the economy and the analysis of the economy as a whole (formal and informal) is more important than focusing solely on the labour market. [15]

It is also important to recognise that there are different forms of the informal sector ranging from home working to paid and unpaid work in different institutions including voluntary work. [16] Some are linked directly or indirectly to industrial and service work in more formal settings. These are profit-oriented operations and can include self-employment and wage work. Others represent survival activities organised at the household and community level. [17] According to the United Nations Human Development Report, monetising non-market work would yield a figure of $16 trillion of which $11 trillion is the non-monetised, invisible contribution of women. [18]

These discussions demonstrate that since 1970 the debate on the informal sector has changed. The focus has moved away from the marginality of the urban poor, their economic activities, and their location within the larger economy. [19] The emphasis has moved on to the level of earnings; the nature of contract; the access to social services; affiliation to labour organisations; integration of the formal and the informal sectors; their dependence on each other and the fact that the informal sector plays an important role in the functioning of the formal sector and the whole economy. [20]

Thus, in the context of Iran, my focus is on women’s work in the formal sector (state enterprises and large industries employing more than ten workers) as well as the informal sector. The informal sector in Iran includes wage workers in private enterprises employing less than ten workers, various types of unpaid family labour at home and the workshops that hire wage-labour - artisan work (carpet weaving and other handicrafts) or simple commodity production (production of dried herbs, pickles, puree, jam, blankets, sheets, cloths and so on).

It is also important to distinguish between these different forms of the informal sector in terms of their class, level of earnings and their paid and unpaid work. In my case study of women and work in Iran, I identified the local perceptions of economic status and occupational categories. Some of the wage-earners are categorised as karmand (middle to high-status workers) and others as kargar (low status workers). Those categorised as karmand generally identify themselves as ‘middle class’ and kargar generally ‘working class’. Urbanisation, family status, different degrees of access to money, property, education and prestige can alter the class of individuals or families. [21] In this context, I have analysed the nature of women’s relationship to the wage, domestic work, gender relations and class structure. From this perspective, I have come to the conclusion that the informal sector workers are part of the working class; although they may not be involved in the production of surplus value directly, they are dependent upon the sale of their labour power for survival. [22]

My case studies highlight clear-cut division of labour by sex, according to Iranian Islamic culture. They also show that the boundary between informal labour and formal labour is not clear cut, especially in the case of poorer women in urban and rural areas who have less access to material resources. I would therefore argue that in Iran the informal sector includes both paid and unpaid work in a variety of institutions, including some voluntary organisations and Non Governmental Organisations. A large number of women (and men) are working in these institutions. Their work is essential for the functioning of the economy and the well being of their families and communities but they do not appear in statistics or the national income.

As is discussed by Beneria, [23] in recent years, a wide range of activities in the volunteer sector has taken place in local neighbourhoods and communities. Some of these activities can easily be defined as production. Others are not directly linked to the market but there is a recognition that these activities contribute to social reproduction and the maintenance of the labour force.

As will be discussed in this paper, patriarchal institutions are obstacles for women’s access to resources and women’s employment; women’s work is affected by family laws, education and health issues as well as employment laws and regulations. However, women, as purposeful agents, devise work and other strategies to renegotiate aspects of gender relations within the patriarchal household, the state, the market and other institutions. In this process they have succeeded in reforming family law, education and employment law which have had a great impact on women and work. These reforms have not only affected the work of women in the formal sector but in the informal sector. Women are confident to work in the informal sector and earn money and change gender relations within the home.

For the analysis of patriarchal gender relations, I have used the concept of ‘patriarchal bargain’. [24] I have extended this argument to women’s struggle for change beyond the household and marriage and into the sphere of economy and society. I have also used the concepts of ‘practical and strategic’ gender interests [25] to discuss the different types of women’s needs. However, as is discussed by Beneria, [26] these concepts ignore many examples of women’s survival strategies as non-feminist because they do not directly raise feminist questions. My aim is to demonstrate that where women have greater access to resources they are able to achieve feminist goals by challenging gender relations and by engaging in active agency at all levels of economic, social, political and cultural life. However, the majority of women may not directly confront gender equality but their survival strategies end up being empowering for them. This analysis is important because the struggle of the women's movement in Iran, including the women's NGOs, during the past two decades represents an unprecedented historical transformation, responding to profound changes in women’s and men’s consciousness and visions of social change. [27]

II. Gender and Economy Before 1979, Under the Secular State of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi Shah

The Iranian state, like many oil producing countries can be characterised as a rentier state. That is a state which relies heavily on oil revenue by massive extraction and export of oil to other countries. [28]

The interrelationship between capitalist development under foreign domination, Shii Islam ideology and class formation in twentieth-century Iran produced uneven economic, social and political developments. The secular state, supported by the West, was the main agent of capital accumulation. It determined and regulated social relations within production and reproduction, between classes and genders. It operated as one single system of capitalism and patriarchy and determined the way women should be incorporated into the public sphere.

Under the influence of the state, capital and religion, different social classes at different periods had different access to material resources, different values attached to religious ideology and different degrees of political power. Whenever the power of the state weakened, women struggled and forced the state to reform. Reforms were made in relation to women’s education and employment. Unveiling and desegregation were also characteristics of this period.

But this uneven development did not allow the majority of women to benefit from the changes. A minority benefited from secular education, reform of family law and opportunities in the labour market. Some even occupied important positions. Despite this, women’s independence in the family and their independent presence in the public sphere were opposed. The 1960s and 1970s saw Iran’s economy and society transformed on a much greater scale than in previous periods. Nevertheless women were incorporated into the economic processes differently from men. The process of economic development in this period remained structurally and spatially uneven. The Import Substitution Industrialisation economic policy meant that the oil economy accumulated the surplus, obtained Western technology and financed industrialisation, the building of infrastructure and improved health, education and employment opportunities. The state bureaucracy provided some employment for a minority of urban women, while the majority of women constituted the bulk of semi-skilled, unskilled and unpaid family workers in industries where new technology was not applied and production remained labour-intensive. The female population remained smaller than the male population, which is characteristic of many developing countries where women’s health is neglected and their education lags behind that of men. Development marginalised the role of the clergy in the economy and society, although Shari’a law determined gender roles and relations. [29]

The interrelationship between pro-West capitalist development and Shii Islam ideology was particularly painful for traditional middle-class women. They had to endure modernisation observing the absolute Islamic values of segregation, including wearing the chador (full-length cover), dictated by their families, especially male relatives who regarded the culture of modernity as horrific and inappropriate for their women. For respecting these values and traditions on the other hand, they had to pay the heavy price of being labelled as backward in schools, universities and workplaces. These women were torn between their families’ traditional values and a society which promoted Western values, including wearing the latest Western fashions. Many tried to resolve this dilemma by accommodating both values. They left home veiled and took their veil off before entering school, university or the workplace. But many others, under family pressure, took a defensive position and wore the veil as a sign of protest at the uneven economic, political and social change. [30]

In the 1970s women’s political participation both inside and outside of the country increased. Many women during this period realised that as long as poverty and repression existed in Iran women would continue to be regarded as inferior beings. They played an important role in the fight against the system. Iranian women abroad joined a strong anti-Shah movement including workers, women, students and ethnic minorities. This period ended with a political revolution in 1979.

III. The First Phase of Islamisation – 1979 - 1981

During the years 1979 -1981, religious and secular women saw the revolution as a first step towards liberation from the uneven economic and political developments of the Pahlavi state. The mass participation of women in the revolution of 1979 and the re-emergence of diverse women’s organisations and women's struggles within the shoras (workers councils) expressed women’s activism in varied ways.

In April 1979 a referendum decided that Iran was to be an Islamic Republic. Soon after sex segregation and hejabe eslami (Islamic dress code) were imposed on women, the Islamic state isolated secular women and favoured the participation of only religious women, in the interest of the patriarchal state. The Islamic state provided material and ideological opportunities for religious women to exercise a degree of power, in comparison with their status under the secular state of the Pahlavi. But by emphasising a rigid sexual division of labour and advocating women’s place in the home, the state ignored varied women’s responses and intensified the patriarchal relationship. However, women’s political activities in the revolutionary period and their paid and unpaid work in the 1980s gave them a sense of collective consciousness against their limited role in the home. [31]

At the economic level, the Islamic state advocated an Islamic command economy. It expanded the state sector and intended to isolate the private sector. Isolation from the global economy combined with an international trade ban on Iran, led to economic depression. Therefore all sectors of the economy suffered and the result was declining output and rising unemployment. The collapse of the currency in the world market undermined Iran’s foreign trade and created shortages and inflation. However, under pressure from the workers’ shoras, wages had increased. As a result of inflation, real wages fell and therefore the increases did not help many poorer families. Unemployment and inflation drastically reduced purchasing power. [32]

During this period, the state strengthened patriarchal gender relations by implementing policies aimed at the complete exclu¬sion of women from the public sphere, especially employment. Motherhood and wifehood were considered the most important tasks for women, while breadwinning was the responsibility of men. The process of excluding women from the labour market was to begin with a policy of gender segre¬gation and strict sexual division of labour. The public behaviour of women became a central issue. A large number of women were sacked because they did not comply with Islamic dress and behaviour codes. Many others were offered early retirement and redundancy. Hence economic depression combined with the state's policy of women's place being in the home reduced the demand for women's labour and increased impoverishment. [33]

The state's policies on women’s employment were reinforced by a strengthen¬ing of patriarchal relations in education and marriage through laws and regulations based on a traditional interpretation of Shari’a, Islamic law. Teach¬ing was segregated; women teachers assigned to girls' schools and men teachers to boys' schools. It was argued that male heads of departments must replace female heads, male secretaries had to work with male heads of departments and male nurses had to look after the male patients. With the lowering of the minimum age of marriage for women to 13, this meant a lowering of educational levels for women. In the first post-revolution nationwide entrance examination, in the academic year 1979-80, women were banned from a number of degree courses. The Family Protection Acts of 1967 and 1975 were suspended. The exclusive rights for men to divorce and to take four permanent and an unlimited number of temporary wives (sighe) without the first wife's permission were returned. The Islamic family legislation was ratified and included: a husband had the right to forbid his wife to take employment; a woman had to obtain permission from her male kin to work, to travel, to study and to change her place of residence; in case of divorce, a father had the right to have custody of female children over 7 and male children over 2, which passed to his relatives in case of his death; contra¬ceptives and abortion were banned. [34]

Segregating women and men in public places was not any¬thing like as successful. For example, allocating certain rooms to men and certain rooms to women in workplaces was not possible. To implement this policy successfully, new buildings would have had to be built to create more space. Nevertheless, in some cases women themselves initiated segregation in workplaces precisely because it created space for them. The imposition of hejab eslami (Islamic dress code), and sex segregation, which was originally designed to marginalise women in the public sphere of life, ironically opened up opportunities for many women workers to participate in the labour market. The impact of Islamic gender ideology was, therefore, contradictory. The contradiction of Islamic state and ideology and women’s experiences of involvement in the revolutionary period led to women’s struggle for women’s rights issues. Women workers were particularly struggling for their rights in the labour market, within the shoras. [35]

Pre-1979, cultural restrictions affected women's mobility; many families did not allow their daughters and female members of their families to join workers organisations. But during and after the 1979 revolution more women became active members of shoras. Many women workers in the pharmaceutical, food and textile industries were involved in the shoras. They were struggling to set up workplace nurseries, literacy classes for women workers and better health and safety conditions of work. In this period women's activities raised gender consciousness. These women were engaged in activities within the workers organisation as women. This was significant because female and male workers were struggling to save their independent shoras, but male workers were against female representation. They believed that women should leave these activities to men. For their part, women believed that they should be represented in the shoras as women workers, because they had specific demands. [36]

Despite women’s struggle, the state's initial gender and employment policy aimed at excluding women from the labour force in the first phase of Islamisation (1979-81). But as will be discussed in the next section the impact of economic circumstances during the war years (1980-88) combined with women’s continued resistance, soon changed the position of the Islamic state on women's employment.

IV. The Impact of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) on Women’s Work

The analysis of my field research data for the second phase of Islamisation (1980-88) suggests that many religious women and men and working class women and men materially benefited from the process of Islamisation. Thus, they supported the Islamic state and society. In this period the Islamic state distributed the wealth by confiscating the property of the Pahlavi Shah and his allies – private domestic owners of capital and their counterparts who had fled the country after the 1979 revolution. The shanty towns were demolished and their populations were housed in the confiscated properties. The religious middle classes, the urban poor and the working classes who supported the Islamic state were given priority in employment and education. The Islamic state gave many Islamists, who were alienated and marginalised by the processes of development in the 1960s and 1970s, under the secular pro-West regime of the Shah, access to material and ideological resources and a space to exercise power. Islamism was born out of material circumstances.

In this period, the women’s movement was divided. The secular women's movement, along with other movements was defeated by the Islamic state. The disassociation of Muslim feminists from secular feminists and their strong association with the Islamic state and institutions led to the rise of state-sponsored religious women's institutions. Muslim feminism became popular and the majority of women related to it. This is because, as an institution similar to other Islamic institutions, Muslim feminism seemed to be representing the stable patterns, norms and behaviour which were recognised and valued by society.

In this period, the Islamic state's economic, gender and employment policies changed. The state had to respond to pressures of war, economic dislocations and rigidities in the labour market. Despite the effect of Islamic gender ideology, a number of factors soon increased the state's demand for female labour.

The Iran-Iraq war reduced the supply of male labour; inflation was another factor, as was Iran's isolation in the world market. The war and the war economy increased the supply of women seeking work or resisting exclusion. The rigidities in the system, determined by the ideology of a gendered division of labour, generated continuing particular demands for female labour. Men were neither trained nor ideologically willing to do `women's jobs', such as nursing, teaching, or secretarial and administrative work.

The demand for female teachers and nurses increased, despite the initial attempt to stop women tending to male patients and teaching male students. Also, a significant number of women were employed in secretarial and administrative tasks.

Although the ideological constraint placed women in a disadvantageous position within the labour market, paradoxically gender segregation opened up opportunities for reli¬gious women to enter employment, and even occupy important positions, for the first time.

My interviews revealed the diversity of women's responses to sex segregation within employment and the positive and negative effects of this policy. Zohreh, a scientist and the manager of a chemical laboratory explained: ‘I do not like to wear the hejab eslami, it is ugly and I feel that women have to cover their body because men cannot help themselves to be sexist, sexually harass women and look at women as sex objects.’

Maryam, a nurse, had a different view: ‘I like to wear the hejabe elsami. I feel that this is respecting the views of people like me. Under the secular state of Pahlavi, I could not get a job as a nurse because I was wearing the chador. But now I can easily get a job as a nurse, because all women have to wear the hejab. I am no longer in the minority.’ [37]

In some cases, segregating women and men in workplaces increased female employment. Opportu¬nities opened for a large number of women to be employed in boutiques and shops serving women only. Supervisory positions were created for women in some factories where male and female workers were segregated on assembly-line production. Zahra, a supervisor of the radio and television assembly line production in the Bel Air factory explained: ‘Since Islamisation we have female supervisors for female workers, like myself, which we did not have before.’ [38]

In this period, the state gradually changed its policy of self-sufficiency and its attempt to operate in isolation from a world economy dominated by the West. Therefore, there was a return to Import Substitution Industrialisation. However, the terms of trade moved against Iran. The Islamic state began to pay for imports through barter deals. Cheap oil was sold in return for expensive imports. The priority was given to food and military equipment. All this resulted in hoarding, shortages and a ration system, and consequently high inflation. [39]

During this period, Islamic ideology concerning female partici¬pation outside the home also changed. Unlike the previous period, when women were forced out of jobs, they were now encouraged to work part-time. Thus, during this period, the demand for female labour increased and was legitimised by the state. But the emphasis remained on part-time work, which reduced women's opportunities, ability and willingness to be in full-time employment with full-time entitlement.

Throughout the Iran-Iraq war women were mobilised by the state, in urban and rural areas, to cook, sew and prepare medicines in the mosques, for men at the war fronts. A large number of Islamic institutions were established Mostazafeen (Downtrodden); Janbazan (self-sacrificing people) - soldiers and their families engaged in the Iran Iraq war; Bonyad Shahid (Martyred Foundation) those who died in the Iran-Iraq war; Baseej (mobilisation of the irregulars for the Iran-Iraq war); Komiteh Imam Khomeini (Ayatollah Khomeini Committee) - to help the poor; Nehzate Savad Amouzi (Literacy Corp); Jahad Sazandegi (Reconstruction Crusade) etc. Many of these organisations demanded the voluntary work of women. There are no statistics to show the number of these women. As a result, demand for the unpaid labour of women increased and the state benefited from it economically and politically. However, even under these circumstances, where the state mobilised women to be active outside the home, the emphasis was still on the home being women's priority.

In rural areas many women have always been carpet-weavers, cloth-weavers and agricultural workers, but they are also invisible in the statistics. The product of their labour is sold by the men of their families in the market. Their unpaid work has always contributed to the household economy as well as the local, national and even international economy. They are not rewarded fully as wage labourers. The Islamic state has not intervened in these working conditions precisely because the work is unpaid and within the home.

Likewise, many women in the cities, self-employed and petty commodity producers or sellers, do not appear in the statistics, although their contribution is essential for the well-being of their families. In this period the number of these women workers increased greatly because of the economic depression of the war years. They worked at home, producing handbags, blankets, sheets, pickles, jams, tomato puree, dried herbs, decorative combs, hair clips, pot plants and T-shirts. They sold them to the co-operatives, neighbours and local shops. Some worked as cab drivers. Their income was essential to cope with inflation, paid for their family’s debt and mortgage and improved their standard of living. Although they recognised that their earnings were important for their families, they did not categorise themselves as self-employed workers. Furthermore, no one ever asked them what they did, and they thought that if they were asked for statistical purposes, they would still call themselves housewives, because they produced the commodities while they were doing the housework. [40]

In urban and rural areas there are also a large number of women working for small private firms. By not registering these workers the employers escape paying tax to the state and benefits and insur¬ance to the workers, and so they do not appear in the statistics. In the mid-1980s, the demand from these industries for female work¬ers increased. This increase was dictated by the cheapness, flexibility and disposability of the female workforce, but hidden as a response to state labour laws.

There were men and women who worked unregistered for private enterprises. They were paid below the national minimum wage and received no benefits or subsidies. Many firms preferred to employ women because they could be hired and fired easily, and many women passed through these firms because this was the only way that they could get a job for a short working day. Women with children were particularly at the mercy of these employers because they often had to arrive late, leave early or bring their children to work because of the shortage of nursery schools.

Throughout the 1980s the number of female workers in these firms increased. For example, the government instructed shops selling women's clothes to employ female shop assistants only. A majority of these shops did not register their workers. When the law caught up with them, they sacked the women and employed new ones. These examples illustrate that a large number of women in urban areas were also invisible in the workforce statistics, while their contribution was essential for their families and for the national economy.

Moreover, gender ideology placed these women workers at a disadvantage by undercounting and undervaluing their work. They received only the minimum wage, without any benefits or subsidies. The benefits and subsidies were extremely important and they made a great deal of difference in the final calculation of what the worker took home. The majority of female workers did not receive paid holidays and sickness benefits because they were not registered. [41]

Religious women resisted the differential treatment meted out to them by the state. For example, according to the Shari'a law when a husband/father dies, the custody rights and the financial rights of the children go to their male kin and not to their mother. The war widows, many of them poorer women in female headed households, worked and raised their children on their own. They supported the Islamic state, but they also challenged the Shari’a law of guardianship, which gave all custody and legal and financial rights to the male kin after the death of the husband. They demanded the right to keep and raise their children and to be entitled to their husband's wage, salary or any living expenses payable out of government budget without interference of male kin. [42]

In conclusion, the economic circumstances of the war years af¬fected women's positions in the labour market. The demand for female labour gradually increased in the state, private (the formal sector) and the informal sectors of the economy. Women were engaged in a variety of occupations and their contribution (paid and unpaid) was absolutely necessary for the well-being of their families. [43] Within the formal sector, a minority of women workers was active in the shoras and fought for their rights as women workers. Throughout the 1980s, many Islamist women and men were radicalised in the processes of economic and political developments and experienced the limitations of the Islamic state and other institutions. They began to resist differential treatment. Women’s employment and work was also affected by family laws as well as employment laws and regulations.

By the late 1980s, women's issues became important social and political issues throughout society. In this period Muslim feminists gradually changed their position in relation to their men-folk and to the state that they had given their support to in the previous period. Issues such as divorce, custody of children and other family laws and regulations affected the economic contribution of all women, especially poorer women in urban and rural areas.

In the 1990s, this common fate and the pressure from below led to joint action between the secular feminists and Muslim feminists. Therefore many professional women, whether secular or religious, as lawyers, as members of the Majles (parliament), as media workers and so on had to leave aside their differences and respond to pressure from ordinary working women.

V. Women and work in the 1990s, the Impact of War Reconstruction and Women’s Struggle for Change

Following the end of the Iran-Iraq war, the economy was reconstructed. The oil money helped to generate funds. The Gulf War of 1991 and the American destruction of Iraq's economy pushed oil prices up, and Iran benefited. The increase in oil revenue for Iran meant an increased GDP - according to UNDP an average annual growth rate of 2.4% between 1990 and 2003. [44] This resulted in imported goods and a rising consumption level. A high rate of growth was achieved. Thus, the gen¬eral level of demand for labour increased as a result of post-war reconstruction. Economic expansion led to prosperity, high expectation and high inflation - according to UNDP, the average annual rate of inflation was 24% between 1990 and 2003. [45]

By the late 1990s, Iran was following the major proponents of the free market economy by curtailing the role of the state and encouraging privatisation. This trend has continued until the present (2005). Today, 80% of the economy is controlled by the Islamic organisations that were set up in the 1980s. They were and still are funded by the state and provide social services to millions of the urban and rural working classes. They, therefore, have grassroots support. Since the late 1990s they have gradually turned into massive capitalist organisations and follow the logic of private capital accumulation. They have established large industrial enterprises, are engaged in the money market and are gradually becoming private enterprises. However, they still absorb the state capital and still provide services to millions of people. [46]

Therefore, the Islamic state, on the one hand reformed political and economic systems as the precondition for transition to a market-oriented regime including domestic economic liberalisation and a more open approach to the international economy. [47] On the other hand, under pressure of women, students, youths and workers, the state continued its interventionist policies. The notion of the interventionist state revolves around the idea that it is embedded in civil society, and subject to political pressures exerted by various civil society organisations. [48] For example, the Iranian state invested in public services. This led to a significant improvement in health, mortality rates and educational attainment both in urban and rural areas. One of the important impacts of the Islamic welfare state was provision of education to the majority of the population. In fact the Islamic state gave priority to Islamists and working classes in urban and rural areas to be educated. This is very important because the secular pro West state in the 1960s and 1970s only served to enrich the small elite and did little to develop the rest of the country.

Women’s participation in the workforce did not fall in this period and their health and education improved significantly. Nevertheless, the social relations of gender remained tightly controlled by men and by the state. Yet, women’s participation in formal and informal economy and their political activities had increased gender consciousness. They continued to put pressure on the state’s patriarchal relations. This produced dynamism within the society as the material and ideological basis of the Islamic state had been brought into question.

Many women, regardless of differences of class and faith, had experienced shared problems due to Islamic law. Religious women especially felt that although they had supported the Islamic state, their interests were ignored. This raised women’s consciousness about the limitations of the state’s gender ideology. Although the subordination of women was deeply ingrained in the consciousness of both men and women, women (and men) also saw from their own experiences that the state and the family benefited from women’s participation in the spheres of economy and politics.

The analysis of change in women's employment in Iran demonstrates the different sources of oppression that limit women's possibilities in the process of socio-economic and socio-political changes. Women were subject to different forms of oppression and simultaneously were engaged in a multitude of struggles. I identified a number of gender ideological issues which impacted the supply and demand for women’s labour.

Women's Preference for Work in the State Sector

Job security has made the state sector of the economy more attractive to both men and women seeking jobs than the private sector, despite lower wages. However, the choice between the state sector and the private sector was different for women and men. Men chose to work in the state sector because of the material advantages; women for ideological reasons. In some cases, eco¬nomic pressure forced women to work in both sectors or to alter¬nate, but it is the pressure of ideology that controls the supply of their labour. Fataneh and Mali, both bank workers, believed that: ‘the state sector has large workplaces where fesad, moral degeneration, can rarely happen. In the small, private-sector workplaces, there is a great deal of fesad, because men and women work closely together. Many women prefer to work for the state sector, they feel safer in these large places, both in terms of the relationship between the sexes and sexual harassment.’ [49]

Male Permission

Despite reforms, it is a convention according to Shari’a that women must obtain permission from their husbands and/or another male head of the family to seek employment or to be employed. All the women that I interviewed had to obtain such permission to go out to work. The majority of my respondents explicitly stated that they would stop working the moment their husbands asked them to. This is to comply not only with the state regulation but also with the ideology. In the majority of cases men do give permission, mainly because women's earnings are essential for the family's survival.

Class and religious observance play an important role in the practice of such a stance. For example, those women who identify themselves as Kargar (working class) with high religious devotion are poorer women whose families need their earnings. Under these circumstances, and despite the ideology, men and women have to accept that women must go out to work. As a result male permission is pure formality. When I interviewed a number of women factory workers and agricultural workers/carpet-weavers and asked them about how they obtained permission from their male kin, they looked at me as if I was asking a strange question, and then laughed and said: ‘men have to give permission, there is no choice.’ [50]

Domestic Work and Shortages of Nursery Schools

Under economic pressure women went out to work, but the ideology of female domesticity put them in a disadvantaged position within the labour market. They worked long hours; they had to take time off to look after their children, the old and the sick within the family and the extended family. [51] As is shown in the table below, the shortage of nursery schools was another constraint on women’s supply of labour.

Table 1: Women's options for child-care facilities

Source: Calculated on the basis of my 348 questionnaires and 76 interviews.

The Structure of the Labour Market

In this period, one important effect of gender ideology was the refusal to recognise women as breadwinners. Therefore their benefits were calculated as for a single person. A single person received half of a married person's allowances and subsidies.

Women with children did not receive child benefit. Married women did not receive the married person's allowance. This reduced their salary drastically in comparison with men's. For the same reason, women's tax, pension and retirement deductions and allow¬ances were also calculated as for a single person.

According to my field research, exclusion from the category of breadwinner and from benefits and subsidies left women's earnings at half to three-quarters of that of their husbands. Moreover, women spent all of their earnings on the household. Men earned more and spent less of their earnings on household expenditure and, there¬fore, saved more. My field research also demonstrated that in cases where women had access to resources and were less constrained by ideology, they were able to benefit from the increase in demand for female labour. [52]

Thus, patriarchal gender relations had a great impact on women’s work and employment status. However, despite ideological constraints on the supply and demand for women’s labour, women collectively and individually contested the institutionalised privileges of men over women.

In this period, women, although divided by the nature of their diversity – different levels of religiosity, secularism, social status, political views and their vested interests, identified with each other and collectively pursued their gender interests. Through collective actions many women came together and, despite strict social rules, conventions and structural limitations on social interaction, challenged gender construction and behavioural conformity dictated by the state and other institutions such as shoras, media, politics, law and education. Women’s struggle for change in these institutions impacted the existing unequal gender relations and forced the Islamic state to respond to women and work and employment status.

Women’s Struggle in Shoras and Trade Associations

Within the formal sector of the economy many women fought for their employment rights within workers’ shoras and associations. Studies on gender and trade unions in Iran demonstrate that despite increase in women workers’ activities in shoras and workers’ associations since the 1980s, they have remained in a minority and have very little voice at all at decision-making levels. There has been a continuing resistance by male workers to women's participation in these organisations; in most shoras and associations women served as treasurers, but their participation was limited when important decisions were taken. [53]

In response, women workers reacted to male dominated shoras and associations by forming Women's Trade Associations. For example, the trade associations for women publishers, teachers, nurses and lawyers. [54] In 1998, Jamileh Kadivar, a journalist and a Member of Parliament (2000 - 2004) established the Women Journalists’ Trade Association and in 2002 published Sedaye Zan, Women's Voice.

The establishment of Women's Trade Associations since the late 1990s demonstrates that Iranian women workers found it difficult to create conditions in which men and women could construct their democratic rights within the labour market. So in their own way they challenged the male dominated workers organisations. This may lead to the formation of more women's trade associations (unions) or women workers may force male dominated institutions to recognise women's full participation in workers organisations. In the meantime, as will be discussed in section six, some women's Non-Governmental Organisations are acting as an array of support groups, available to women outside formal workplaces. [55] They are not substituting the shoras and associations and they do not organise women as workers. Nevertheless, despite their limited activities they have transformed into an alternative civil society organisation, as they have found it easier to construct their professional rights through women's institutions.

Women and the Media

In the 1990s (and until today, 2005), women’s media created employment for a significant number of women in Iran. For a variety of reasons, many of these women media workers do not appear in the statistics. Sometimes the work is not permanent. Sometimes newspapers and journals are closed down and the media workers move from one work place to another.

Prior to 1979 there were two women’s newspapers and magazines. By 1999 there were at least ten. They created employment for many women journalists, photographers, designers and other women media workers. They actively discussed women’s issues, ranging from debates over feminism and patriarchy, to women’s positions within the family, employment, law and education.

Prior to 1979 there were no women publishers in Iran. By the late 1990s there were over 400. They were educated and changed the traditional character of these institutions which were dominated by men who did not have higher education. They created employment for many women workers and at the same time contributed to gender justice and democracy in Iran. [56]

The Iranian women’s cinema particularly opened up opportunities for a large number of women to work as scriptwriters, designers, producers, directors, actors, managers, music composers, make up artists and so on. Moreover, it explicitly criticised patriarchal gender relationships under the Islamic state, and at the same time conveyed a strong message that women, as active partici¬pants in social issues, were in a position to change society. Prior to 1979 there were only two female directors in Iran. By the late 1990s there were at least ten and the emphasis moved away from ghostly images of women in the background or in a domestic environment to a portrayal of women as virtuous, active and socially constructive. [57]

My study of women and the media in Iran demonstrates that employment was created for a large number of young and educated women who may or may not appear in the statistics. Moreover, despite, the lack of coherent feminist organisations, many women have discussed, debated and exchanged ideas through the media. Therefore, they have played an important role in increased gender consciousness and changed gender relations.

Women and Politics

Throughout the 1990s women’s active participation within political institutions highlighted and challenged the existing unequal gender relations and forced the Islamic state to respond. The Majles (Parliament) in particular, became an important institution for women to struggle and change or reform the laws in favour of women. Women also actively participated in the 1990's presidential, parliamentary and local elections.

Women's political participation resulted in a landslide victory for the reformers. Even in small cities and rural areas women were elected. This means that a large number of women are participating in decision making at both city and local levels on economic, political, social and cultural issues.

According to the Shari’a and Article 115 of the Constitution, a woman could not become president. Despite this, in the 1997 presidential election, nine women stood as a form of protest, forcing the state to admit to its own limitations. Likewise, during the 1998 election of Majles Khebregan (the Assembly of Experts), women’s media waged a campaign to include women in the assembly and encouraged women to stand for election. [58]

In the period 1999-2001 the number of women who occupied high positions within formal politics increased. The number of seats in parliament held by women increased to 4.1%. Three women were advisers to the president; sixteen women were advisers to different ministries; there were 106 women in the position of directorship. However, women were on the whole under-represented in formal politics. But it is important to recog¬nise that they had and still have a base. The support of the majority of women for the few elite women must be seen as a political act outside conventional politics.

Women and Law

Change in the material circumstances of women and their participation in the labour market and politics raised their gender consciousness. They began to question the limitations of the Islamic state and began to press for further reform, especially in family law which is the foundation of many obstacles for women’s employment and general participation in the public sphere of life. Reforms were made in laws regarding marriage, divorce and the custody of children. The High Judicial Council agreed with a new clause in the marriage law, stating that women, at the time of marriage, may request that the clause 'Condition under the Marriage Law' be included in their marriage contract. Under this clause a woman had the right to work and ask for divorce, refuse the husband the right to marry another woman, and have custody of her children, boys to their adulthood and girls as long as she did not remarry. A man no longer had the unilateral right to divorce his wife simply by registering his will at a registry office without the woman's knowledge; men and women had to go to the civil courts for divorce, and registry offices could register divorce only with a civil court's decree. [59]

Also, with the efforts of female lawyers such as Shirin Ebadi and Mehranguiz Kaar and the support of women's journals and news¬papers between 1996 and 1999, twenty reformed family laws were passed in favour of women. The modification of the institutions of mahr (bride price) and nafaghe (maintenance) were particularly beneficial for poorer women. According to the new regulations if a man wishes to divorce his wife, he has to pay her mahr index linked. The Central Bank of Iran specialists determine and calculate the updated rate of mahr. Also, according to the reformed divorce law, if a man decides to divorce his wife unjustly he has to pay nafaghe and ojratolmesl to her - the equivalent of her contribution to the family throughout the years that they lived together. The aim is to limit men's easy access to divorce and provide financial compensation for many poorer women. [60]

These reforms, initiated and fought for by female lawyers, led to change in the Islamic state policy on women’s work in the judiciary. In the first and second phase of Islamisation women had no right to be judges. In this third period the reform of the law allowed female lawyers to practise family law in the civil courts and work as research judges. They prepared the case, the evidence and the argu¬ment and presented it to a male judge who made the final decision on the basis of their research. This allowed women lawyers to act as judges in family law. Remarkably some clergy began to argue that in principle, in Islamic terms, there is no barrier to women acting as full judges and giving full judgment in all cases. [61]

Women and Education

In this period, the education system was also reformed, allowing women greater participa¬tion in previously restricted fields of study. The regulations forbidding females to study a number of subjects were modified, creating more opportunities for women to work in different fields. The female literacy rate increased to 74%. The number of women in higher education increased to 62%. There are clear indications that women’s higher educational levels and rising labour market participation contributed to a gradual increase in women’s participation in managerial and professional occupations. This was despite all the limitations of Islamic gender ideology and the state's intention to seclude women in the home. The establishment of Alzahra University, for women only, played an important role. The lecturers had exploited the idea of the uni¬versity as a single-sex institution and had opened up opportunities for women to study many courses not available in other universities.

The interaction between ideological factors and material circum¬stances changed gender consciousness and attitudes to female education. Many families now regarded higher education as a valuable asset for women as well as for men. The ideal future was seen to depend on being a university graduate. The idea of ‘marriage after university; work after university; independence after university' became a shared value expressed by many young women.

These reforms were a result of pressure on the state applied by women who were educated and were part of the labour force, whether formal or informal work, despite Islamic ideology. However, access to education and employment are necessary but insufficient conditions to deal with gender-based and other forms of inequality due to discriminatory practices. Hence, many women saw the necessity to press for anti-discriminatory policies on different fronts. In 1990 religious women objected to the 1985 education law which prevented unmarried female students from studying abroad. They argued that they supported the Islamic state, but that their interests were defined in both gender and class terms, and that the Islamic state was failing them by ignoring their interests. [62]

Family planning and population control policies have also been successful in Iran. The media, especially women's magazines, encouraged the use of contraceptives. Different forms of contraception (the pill, condoms, coil and sterilisation) were free of charge and available on demand. National newspapers reported that there was widespread backstreet abortion and warned about the dangers of this practice. They implied the legalisation of abortion. They provided information about the percentage increase in the use of different forms of contraception and the hospitals around the country which were dis¬tributing different forms of contraception free of charge. The statistics for annual population growth rate show that the government's popu¬lation control policy was successful. As is shown in section six in 1970 the rate was 3%, but between 1990 and 2003 it reached 1.5%.

Women’s Individual Responses to Patriarchal Gender Relations

Besides organised struggles, women also responded to the patri¬archal control of men and the state on an individual basis by choosing different strategies to negotiate with different forms of patriarchy. The availability of resources or lack of them, both ideological and material, provided different bases from which women struggled to survive, to secure a better future or improve their status. More importantly, women's organised and individual responses were complementary. Together they generated gender consciousness and, within the Islamic framework, transformed gender relations.

In urban areas women had greater visibility in public life because they had better access to education and employment. Many of these women resisted patriarchal gender relations by breaking the traditional rules. They had a greater degree of autonomy to make decisions about their sexuality, earnings and disposal of income. Simin an accountant explained: ‘I have no intention of getting married. I work for the state sector in the morning and in a private company in the afternoon and evening. The state sector gives me the security and I earn a lot of money in the private sector.’

In rural areas, many religious women, especially those with limited access to material resources and waged employment, bargained with patriarchy by conforming to most of its rules. Ameh Khanom, a carpet weaver and agricultural worker explained: ‘I produce grapes, cumin, barley, cotton, wheat, pistachios and carpets. I never go to the market, as this is the men’s job’.

Those who rebelled against the patriarchal rules were a small minority. Those who conformed to the rules were a larger minority. The majority of women, both in rural and urban areas, bargained with patriarchy by using a mixture of conformity and rebellion. Their degree of access to material resources and ideological constraint determined to what extent they conformed or rebelled and their ability to achieve a particular goal. Golrang, a teacher and a carpet weaver and agricultural worker explained: ‘I am 33 years old and have not married yet, but there is no real pressure. I teach at the village school and I also weave carpets and work on the land. My father sells the carpets that I weave and the agricultural products that I produce. But I keep my earnings from teaching. If my family needs money, I give my salary to my father, but if they do not need it, I keep it for myself.’ [63]

As was discussed in section two above, the majority of women are engaged in the struggle of daily survival. They may not directly confront gender equalities and raise feminist questions, but their survival strategies end up being empowering for them.

To conclude it is important to note that during the 1980s and 1990s, the Islamic state, as the main agent of economic development and social control, under pressure from economic circumstances, largely adapted to the world economy. Material factors arising from the economic circumstances of the war years had a powerful impact on Islamic ideological attitudes to female participation in the work¬force. The process of segregation, which had aimed at the exclusion of women from employment, paradoxically opened up opportuni¬ties for many religious women to enter employment. Despite state patriarchal gender relations, women's employment in this period did not fall in compari¬son with the pre-1979 period. Of equal importance was women's participation in the formal and informal sectors of the economy, which politicised many women, who, through their own experiences, identified a common ground to struggle against a set of oppressive measures by learning to see and know from a differ¬ent perspective. They were able to challenge the Islamic state.

The politicisation and increased gender consciousness, especially among the new generation and the religious and working-class women who supported the Islamisation of society, gave the elite women a great deal of strength to campaign around specific issues to reduce inequality and to increase women's participation in political, economic, social and cultural arenas. Moreover, the support of the majority of women in Iran for the elite women and their informal association with them, through different institutions – employment, education, parliament, law and media, played an important role in eroding the legitimacy of the authoritarian rule and promoting democratic issues. This informal association of women, as a form of women’s movement, is deeply involved in the process of democratisation.

Endnotes

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50. Poya, Women, Work and Islamism, 113-114.

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52. Poya, Women, Work and Islamism, 119-121.

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59. Poya, Women, Work and Islamism, 98-103.

60. Poya, Women, Work and Islamism, 98-103.

61. Rostami Povey, ‘Feminist Contestations’.

62. Keyhan Daily Newspaper, 22 November 1990.

63. Poya, Women, Work and Islamism, 148-155.