Recently the UN’s International Labour Organization released a report which said that female unemployment in the Middle East (16.3%) is more than double that of men’s (6.8%) and that even those women who can find jobs are often earning low wages in low-skilled jobs.

Emanuela Pozzan, a UN gender specialist, said: “The incentive for women to work in the Middle East is not there. The jobs are not attractive because the salaries are not attractive.”
She noted that there are also few good maternity leave and child-care services in the region.

This report followed a ranking by the World Economic Forum, which found Iran to be one of the five worst countries in the world to be a woman and especially for women in the workplace.

Why is Iran such a bad place for working women?

Simply, because the misogynist mullahs who run Iran regime don’t want women to work. They would much rather that Iranian women were pushed back into the home sphere and so have enacted many laws that restrict a woman’s ability to work in order to reduce the number of working women.

This includes, but is not limited to,:

• allowing employers to create male-only positions, so that women cannot even apply
• forcing women to abide by their husband’s word, so he can prevent her from travelling for business, entering certain industries, and working altogether
• allowing employers to fire women for taking maternity leave
Women’s research studies said that has led to increased job instability for women and reduced the chances that they can get hired or promoted.
What is the alternative?
Luckily, there is a prominent democratic alternative to the mullahs regime in Iran and it is waving a feminist flag.

Maryam Rajavi, the President-Elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), believes that gender equality is essential to a Free Iran and has highlighted ten areas that need to be changed to make sure that women and men are equal.

The fifth is specifically relate to employment and states that women should have equal economic rights to men, which includes equal opportunities in the job market, equal pay and equal employment rights with men.

Rajavi would also ban laws that allow employers to insist that women wear the hijab or that women have to get permission from her husband to work.
an laws that allow employers to insist that women wear the hijab or that women have to get permission from her husband to work.