The unemployment rate among women has always been greater than that of men in Iran, like several other developing countries. The main reason is the difficulties women face to enter the job market.
The Centre of Statistics of Iran has published a report on the employment rate in the past summer which shows that although the number of people entering the job market has increased, the growth among women was lower than of men.
According to this report, the unemployment rate among women is nearly 20%, while this figure for men is only 10.3%.
Iran Newspaper indicates an interesting difference between jobs in which Iranian men and women are interested in. While women prefer to find jobs related to their study and profession, Iranian men do not much care about it.
The reason might lay in the traditional culture in Iranian households where men are mainly responsible for financial support of the family. Although this trend is changing, when men decide to form a family they are expected to have a solid source of income. This expectation pushes them to find jobs which may be far from their university qualifications. In other words, they just need to find a job. While women can be pickier in this regard.
However, since the society currently does not offer enough professional job vacancies, more women with this mind-setting remain unemployed.
While the unemployment rate among university graduates in Iran is around 18 percent, this rate among female graduates reaches 30%. This figure among male graduates is less than 13%.