Women carpet weavers in the surrounding villages of Kerman weave expensive carpets with more than 18 hours of daily work. However, from an 11-million-touman worth carpet, women carpet weavers receive a monthly salary of only 380,000 toumans.
Rural women do not have any capital. Therefore, they cannot procure raw material for carpet production. This leads these rural women carpet weavers to work for profiteers in exchange for the purchase of raw materials.
For example, a six-square-meter handmade carpet with natural yarn needs more than two months to be woven. Women carpet weavers make this product with overnight effort and work for more than 18 hours a day, but the average wage paid by the contractors is only 380,000 toumans per month. From the entire six- square-meter handmade carpet, women carpet weavers eventually receive 760,000 toumans. However, the entire carpet costs close to 11 million toumans.
That is why women prefer working at workshops and factories with a wage of 950,000 toumans instead of working at home. This is even lower than the minimum wage set by the Ministry of Labor.
In an interview on May 16, 2018, Abdullah Bahrami, the CEO of the Union of Carpet Manufacturers referred to the problems of women carpet weavers and said, “Once the population of carpet weavers in the country was 2 million, which was reduced to one million due to the abusive behavior towards their rights. From the remaining population of carpet weavers, only about 320,000 people have been covered by the country’s insurance, and by the end of 2018, at least one million remaining non-insured carpet weavers are supposed to be covered. But not only has this not happened, but more than 150,000 who were insured have been removed from insurance.” (The state-run ILNA news agency – May 16, 2018)
A large percentage of women carpet weavers are women heads of household, but these women do not have insurance.
