Photo: Municipality of Tehran, Mehrkhane Agency

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Being a poor, unemployed woman in Iran

Maryam Amiri, Tehran Community Manager

Tehran, 27 February 2015

Being unemployed is one of the most challenging issues that Iranian youth face. Despite recent improvements in education levels and literacy rates, many students still remain unemployed after graduation, or are employed in fields unrelated to what they studied.

The situation is even tougher for women. They are less welcomed in the labor market due to the ideological preferences of the government. Just recently, a law was ratified in Parliament limiting the employment of women, especially single ones, in state offices and universities. Many universities refuse to register women in certain fields of study.

The issue of women's unemployment is even worse among the low-income population that usually lives in informal and poor settlements. Job opportunities are very limited: residents have almost no access to city centers (spatial trap) and a great majority of them are not educated at all (most of them are rural immigrants).

Two kinds of solutions have been deployed during recent years: the first is a "self-employment plan," which came from government and municipality. For example in Tehran, the municipality provided a low-rent space for women to sell their homemade products. These spaces were limited to certain areas in Tehran's midtown, and were available for just a few days each time. This project was not successful in attracting poor households, and clearly failed to accomplish its objectives. The failure was due to the fact that production cost of these homemade products is far more than that of factory products, so the women's profit margins hardly cover their expenses like rent and transportation costs.

The other solution is more spontaneous. In the current stagnation period of Iran's economy, job creation plans are not deemed affordable by the government. Iran's NGOs are very limited in number, and their effectiveness in providing professional training is also limited. These facts lead the poor youth to find their own individual solutions, including peddling.

From the very first days of Tehran's subway in 1999, poor young women discovered its potential as a suitable place to sell their trinkets. Despite the occasional intervention of Subway Security Guards, there were no serious obstacles for them to work, until summer 2014, when the Tehran Municipality announced that it would seriously prevent peddling in the metro. The transit authority was given the right to prohibit such activities, so from then on, security guards have conducted brutal purges of peddlers from the subway.

After a while, the crackdown was deemed unsuccessful in preventing women from working. Escaping from security guards and hiding among the crowd became an inseparable part of their job. Their resistance led civic organizations to support them. Lots of Facebook pages were created (on this page, ordinary citizens support and sympathize with peddlers). In addition, the Bahamestan Foundation, focused on the right to the city in Tehran, began to defend the peddlers' fundamental right to subsistence. They invited social activists, intellectuals, sociologists, and university professors on discussion panels about the peddling phenomenon. The organization also held a public seminar with subway peddlers, activists, and municipality officials as participants.

Although the peddling ban is still enforced, young female peddlers are strengthening their rights and resisting security guard interventions with the cooperation of NGOs.

 
Photo: Municipality of Tehran, Mehrkhane Agency

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