In Iran, women start breaking into business world

By JEHANGIR POCHA
© St. Petersburg Times
published December 27, 2002

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TEHRAN, Iran -- Unable to contain his annoyance over a reservation problem, the man at the travel agency counter snaps at the woman helping him, ordering her to fetch the manager. She leans forward and gently tells him she owns the place.

"It must have been a dual blow for him," Naudi Zamani laughs that evening as she closes the three-person travel agency she started last year. "First he must have been surprised that a woman owned the place, then worried that there was no man to help sort out the problem."

Since President Mohammad Khatami's reforms of the late 1990s, a new breed of women entrepreneurs has struggled against Iran's twin obstacles of socialism and sex discrimination to win greater opportunities. But the going has not been smooth.

"The main problem," Zamani says, is that people, even other women, perceive "a man to be more capable" than a woman.

Though Iran has few official discriminatory policies against working women or businesswomen, religious laws that give women a generally inferior place in this Islamic society spill over into the workplace. According to government figures, just fewer than 30 percent of Iranian women work outside the home, and few of those make it past entry-level positions. In Iran's public sector, the nation's largest employer, women make up 30 percent of the work force but account for 5 percent of management positions.

Shortly after setting up her travel agency, Zamani says, she was often the last to learn of discounts and promotions because she was excluded from the "local club" of airline employees and tourism officials. More significantly, while she had no problems with retail clients, almost every attempt she made to break into corporate accounts failed. Though Zamani says she is increasing her revenues every month, her business is running at only a fraction of its potential because of her inability to break into the corporate market.

Entrepreneurs, male or female, have always faced hostility in Iran from the government and the entrenched community of traditional merchants and traders called bazaaris. State ownership of most industries in Iran has meant that the private sector has traditionally been restricted to operating small-scale retail and trading firms, usually centered in small bazaars.

Most bazaars are essentially a complex of side-by-side businesses built around a mosque to which the bazaaris donate a portion of their earnings. This traditional arrangement has made the bazaaris a tightly knit community with close ties to Iran's clergy.

With 80 percent of Iran's capital owned by the government, opportunities for entrepreneurship have traditionally been few, and jealously guarded by the bazaaris. This used to make it almost impossible for newcomers, especially women, to break into business. But the new economy of the 1990s changed much of that.

"New service industries opened up a new dimension of the economy," says Mehran Sepheri, a professor at Iran's first school of management at Tehran's Sharif University. Iran's marginalized groups, including Ba'hais and Zoroastrians, have been quick to seize the new opportunities. And Iranian women suddenly find themselves well positioned to exploit the knowledge-based opportunities of the service economy that the bazaaris are not equipped to grasp.

Employment discrimination has, over the years, driven increasing numbers of Iranian women to universities, where entrance exams are gender-blind. This year, 62 percent of Iran's university students are women. That gives them better odds in the job market, but they still wrestle with gender discrimination and a general shortage of jobs in traditional sectors. As a result, a growing number of educated Iranian women are starting businesses in such emerging fields as graphic design, film production, publishing and specialty retailing.

"If I want to be an editor, unless I have my own magazine, I will have to work twice as hard for twice as long as a man," says Parastoo Dokouhaki, a journalist with the women's magazine Zanaan. "So I think -- why not start my own magazine!"

If Dokouhaki sounds a little surprised at her words, it's because female entrepreneurs in Iran are still uncommon. Government surveys and studies of women's employment and affairs do not list "entrepreneurs" as a category. Nongovernmental organizations estimate fewer than 1,000 female-owned enterprises operate in Iran, excluding such traditional sectors as women's clothing, carpet weaving and agriculture -- where female participation remains high.

Though Iranian women have always enjoyed relatively extensive rights, as compared to their counterparts in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan, and have been further empowered by the political and social reforms of Khatami, the firm patriarchy of postrevolution Iran has meant that Iranians are not used to the idea of independent women in roles of authority.

"In every house in Iran today, there is a conflict over the role of women working -- the barriers are not so much official as social," Dokouhaki says.

Even if a woman works, Dokouhaki says, it is expected that her career is second to her primary duty as a housewife. The widespread belief that men are the primary breadwinners means that men get higher wages, quicker promotions and priority for jobs, especially since unemployment is, unofficially, as high as 50 percent.

Zamani says starting a business is the quickest way around these obstacles and she applauds Khatami's ongoing efforts to encourage new businesses. This year the government signed the Global Convention on Discrimination Against Women which, among other things, bans differential treatment of women in employment and business.

The government also has moved to make it easier for entrepreneurs, regardless of gender, to get financing through Iran's public sector banks and repealed many outmoded tax laws and regulations. The actions have been primarily a response to an ossified public sector that is bleeding money, corrupt and fails to generate jobs.

But resistance from Islamic hardliners continues.

Traditionalists such as Zadsar Jirofti, a conservative member of Parliament, question the social cost of allowing women into business by pointing to studies like one by the Women's Commission in West Azerbaijan province. The study showed that the highest percentage of divorces in the province, 44.2, were among families where women owned private businesses. While women's groups say the study shows independence empowers unhappy women to change their circumstances, Jirofti says it degrades morality.

Jirofti argues that restrictions imposed on women -- laws that give women unequal inheritance, deny them custody of children in a divorce and require their husband's permission before working -- "have the best interests of Iranian women at heart" and "defend the honor and integrity of Iranian women and the Iranian society as a whole."

Yet, informal networks and women's rights groups have spread across the country to guide and assist women in their careers and businesses. The pioneers of women's rights have become role models for a new generation of women, who are growing up with a different sense of themselves and their possibilities.

"After I learn my English, I want to start a translation company," says Sara Ghatta, a high school student in Esfahan. There is no hesitation in her voice.