Despite a sharp increase in higher education among Iranian women in recent decades, the clerical regime continues to block their access to meaningful employment, reinforcing an outdated and discriminatory gender ideology that sidelines women as mere homemakers.
A researcher at the Institute for Cultural and Civilizational Studies in Iran openly criticized the regime’s deeply embedded gender division of labor. (ILNA news agency, May 12, 2025)
The warnings by Khadijeh Keshavarz come amid rising frustration among Iranian women—particularly those with higher education degrees—who find themselves systematically excluded from the workforce. It appears that the regime has weaponized economic stagnation and official platforms to perpetuate systemic gender apartheid under the guise of tradition and culture.
Education Without Employment: A Dead-End for Iranian Women
Over the past three decades, there has been a significant increase in Iranian women pursuing higher education. From the mid-1990s onward, female participation in university entrance exams surged, and women began outnumbering men in many academic fields.
However, this educational advancement has not translated into employment. The labor market remains firmly closed to them, with the regime failing to create economic structures that include or benefit educated women.
Keshavarz noted that the official economic participation rate—which includes the employed and those actively seeking jobs—remains low for women. Based on 2021 labor force data, over 40% of unemployed individuals with higher education were women, with women comprising nearly 72% of that group.
This staggering disparity illustrates a brutal contradiction: women invest in education only to be shut out of the job market upon graduation.
State-Endorsed Gender Roles: A Tool for Suppression
Instead of addressing the employment crisis, the regime has doubled down on patriarchal narratives. The Iranian regime reinforces a rigid ideology that men are breadwinners while women belong in the home. These messages are broadcast through state media, official speeches, and even educational settings, conditioning women to internalize inequality as cultural destiny.
This narrative is not new. It is a continuation of a state-driven gender order that began during the clerical regime’s inception in 1979, which brought about a deeply repressive system.
The regime’s messaging has shifted only slightly over the years, now offering university education as a way for women to “become better mothers” or “more companionable wives”—a disturbing rebranding of intellectual subjugation.
In conversations with female students at Iran’s top universities, many still express hopes for professional growth and self-fulfillment through education. Yet their hopes are increasingly crushed by a job market unwelcoming to female professionals and a government committed to their marginalization.
Normalization of Women’s Unemployment in Deprived Areas
The situation is particularly dire in peripheral provinces and marginalized areas, such as Ilam in western Iran or Sistan and Baluchestan in the southeast, where job prospects for women are practically nonexistent. In these regions, the gendered division of labor becomes even more extreme. Women with degrees often accept unstable, low-paying positions—such as contract teaching at private schools—or are forced into informal sectors like street vending and home-based work.
ILNA shared the story of a woman with a master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Ilam, who now works precariously in a private school without job security or financial stability. With such dismal prospects, many women find themselves adopting the regime’s patriarchal ideology simply as a form of psychological survival, convincing themselves that being dependent on a husband is normal or even preferable.
This manufactured dependency is not a cultural accident; it is the result of a calculated state policy to exclude women from the economy while maintaining social control. The Iranian regime uses economic strangulation to discipline women into submission, normalizing joblessness through the reinforcement of religious and cultural dogma.
An Educated but Oppressed Generation
Iran’s broader economic collapse, high inflation, widespread unemployment, and a lack of meaningful growth further darken the picture.
The regime’s mismanagement and prioritization of militarism and internal repression over economic development have created a society with no room for its educated citizens. Even male university graduates face exclusion, with the market favoring unskilled or informal labor over the educated, simply because the system cannot absorb skilled workers.
Today, many of the educated are funneled into unstable, underpaid jobs or excluded entirely from the labor force. Some 4–5% of women have disappeared from official labor statistics in the past two decades, not because they stopped working, but because their precarious, off-the-books jobs are not officially counted. (ILNA, May 12, 2025)
Yet in areas like arts, literature, sports, and grassroots activism—including NGOs—some women remain active despite the odds. This reflects a new, socially aware generation of Iranian women—one that is educated, globally informed, and unwilling to accept the lies they are fed. However, access to these spaces is often limited to middle-class urban women. For women in deprived provinces, these paths are often out of reach.
No Reform Without Regime Change
The Iranian regime’s systemic oppression of women goes far beyond ideology—it is built into the laws, the economic fabric, media messaging, and education system. This is not a matter of flawed policies or poor implementation. It is the logical outcome of a regime whose survival depends on silencing half its population.
Until this clerical regime is dismantled, Iranian women, no matter how educated, skilled, or ambitious, will continue to be relegated to second-class status. True change can only come from regime change. Until then, the dreams of Iranian women for autonomy, equality, and economic independence will remain not just deferred, but deliberately destroyed.
