Women in Virus-Hit Iran Tech Sector Fight to Keep Hard-Won jobs

By Lucie Peytermann

From the hustle and bustle of a startup, Fereshteh Kasrai now works from home, like many Iranian women fighting to keep hard-won tech jobs as the coronavirus outbreak stirs uncertainty.

Iran says the COVID-19 disease has claimed more than 5,200 lives and infected close to 83,000 over the past two months, in the Middle East's deadliest outbreak.

Kasrai says working remotely from the confines of her home amid the health crisis has had its upsides and downsides.

"Emotionally, it's very bad, but it's more efficient," she says in a teleconference call.

She comes across as tired, contrasting with the energetic tone when AFP met her at her workplace in Tehran a few weeks ago.

"For me, it's a little bit difficult. I miss my colleagues and I miss the days when we interacted," she says.

The 44-year-old is head of human resources at Alibaba, Iran's largest online travel booking service.

She doesn't hide her concerns for the startup whose core business has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.

Kasrai and her colleagues had to adapt at short notice to ensure they didn't lose out.

"We are having daily meetings and video calls. It's not the same quality as face-to-face work but it's the best we can do."

'Iran Silicon Valley'

To enter Alibaba's headquarters is to enter another Iran, a short distance from impoverished districts of the capital.

An "Iran Silicon Valley" sign adorns the entrance of the building.

The interior is trendy with giant cushions in rest areas and glass enclosed offices where staff focus their gaze on high-end computers.

Dressed in tight-fitting jeans and scarves that reveal their hair, women work alongside men, an uncommon mix in the Islamic republic.

Of the nearly 700 employees at Alibaba, 42 percent are women. Some have senior roles, a challenge in this patriarchal society.

"I worked with three large companies before Alibaba... and I felt that growing in those places requires a certain condition," Anis Amir Arjmandi, a legal manager, says referring to nepotism.

"The opportunities I'm given here—which is not because of my gender or my position, but the company's way of doing things—enable me to have a degree of freedom," she says.

Her colleague Fatemeh Ashrafi, 38, says there are more opportunities in startups.

"There's more space to express oneself, since the bureaucratic hierarchies are less intrusive," she says.

"We can see our managers whenever we want. We don't need to wait at their doors and ask for time" to meet.

Tech journalist Khosro Kalbasi says women benefit from working in startups as they are more progressive with younger managers.

"Over the years the number of women employed by these companies has grown," he says.

Iran is one of the Middle East's most connected with an internet penetration rate of 87 percent.

Opportunity to Innovate

Azadeh Kian, professor of sociology in Paris and a specialist on Iran, says women account for 70 percent of engineering and science students in the Islamic republic.

"It is a sector where they know they can have more room for improvement and the possibility of innovating," Kian says.

Kasrai says Iranian women are becoming increasingly assertive in the workplace.

"They have no fear to express themselves," she says.

She said she was pleased to see "as many women as we have men" in Alibaba's tech division, breaking the "taboo" that a programmer must be a man.

Startups began emerging in Iran in the 2000s, before really taking off from 2013.

But the country's tech sector was hit hard by the reinstatement of US sanctions in 2018, after the United States withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.

In an unexpected twist, the sanctions were seized upon by Iranian entrepreneurs as an opportunity to launch even more startups.

With the benefit of being protected from foreign competition, they took inspiration from global giants to create local equivalents.

Among them are Digikala, Iran's answer to US online retailer Amazon, as well as Tap30 and Snapp!, which are similar to US ride-hailing service Uber.

Mona Ahmadi says she has flourished at Tap30, where she manages around 140 call centre workers, 61 of them young women.

"I'm a workaholic," says the 33-year-old, dressed in a denim jacket and leggings.

"I've always wanted to have a good job and social status," she says with a smile.

Forty-five percent of Tap30's staff are women.

"Most of them are less than 30 years old, and they are employed in all sectors -- marketing, technical, HR, call centre," says Negar Arab, who is head of communications.

As well as Arab's own position, the company's finance and legal divisions also have women at the helm, she adds.

But Arab says the coronavirus outbreak has turned her life upside down.

She says it has made her "very busy" between working remotely and taking care of her daughter and her family.

One of the biggest success stories among Iran's startups is Takhfifan, an online retailer founded by Nazanin Daneshvar and her sister.

Established eight years ago, Takhfifan employs 350 people but its offices are now closed and working from home is widespread.

"Everything has come as a bit of a shock," Daneshvar says on the phone, her baby babbling away in the background.

"The (staff) are really doing a good job although it is very difficult and can be exhausting" to work from home and to handle things remotely using apps, she says.

She also laments that there aren't enough "women at the critical and top, top positions in e-commerce".

Family Pressures

Times had already been tough for women long before the coronavirus outbreak.

"In the first couple of years, I used to take my dad along (to meetings) because nobody accepted me as the manager," Daneshvar says.

But even now it is still "two times more difficult" to work as a woman, she says.

"The reality I always fight against is that they judge men based on their potential but judge women on their past performance."

As a result, many end up quitting, says Daneshvar.

"I have had employees who left... as the husband is not happy because they couldn't cook at the right time, or they couldn't deliver what you expect as a traditional woman."

Arjmandi says most top posts are filled by men, leaving women vulnerable.

She says women are more likely to lose jobs amid the health and economic crises, especially in governmental or semi-governmental enterprises.

Photo: HAMAVA

Iran Women to See Football Freely for First Time in Decades

By Amir Havasi

Iranian women fans are free to enter a football stadium Thursday for the first time in decades, after FIFA threatened to suspend the Islamic republic over its controversial male-only policy.

Iran has barred female spectators from football and other stadiums for around 40 years, with clerics arguing they must be shielded from the masculine atmosphere and sight of semi-clad men.

World football's governing body FIFA last month ordered Iran to allow women access to stadiums without restrictions and in numbers determined by demand for tickets.
The directive came after a fan dubbed "Blue Girl" died after setting
herself on fire in fear of being jailed for dressing up as a boy in order to
attend a match.

Women were quick to get their hands on tickets to attend Iran's 2022 World Cup qualifier against Cambodia at Tehran's Azadi Stadium on Thursday.

The first batch sold out in under an hour, and additional seats were also snapped up in short order, state media said.

A sports ministry official said the 100,000-capacity stadium—whose name means "Freedom" in Farsi—was ready to host even more women.

One of the 3,500 women to have secured a ticket was Raha Poorbakhsh, a football journalist.

"I still can't believe this is going to happen because after all these years of working in this field, watching everything on television, now I can experience everything in person," she told AFP.

'Blue Girl'

But Poorbakhsh said she was aware of many other women without tickets and some were expected to travel from as far away as Ahvaz in southern Iran in the hope of still getting one.

Those lucky enough to attend will be segregated from men and watched over by 150 female police officers, according to Fars news agency.

People on the streets of Tehran said they supported the decision to allow women into stadiums.

"I would like there to be freedom for women, like men, to go freely and even sit side by side without any restrictions, like other countries," said a woman who only gave her name as Hasti.

Nader Fathi, who runs a clothing business, said the presence of women could improve the atmosphere in stadiums.

But he said "they will regret it" if they are exposed to "really bad swear words" and "bad behavior".

The bumpy road Iranian women have travelled in order to gain free access to stadiums has not been without tragedy.

Sahar Khodayari died last month after setting herself ablaze outside a court in fear of being jailed for attending a match.

Dubbed "blue girl" because of the colors of the club she supported, Esteghlal FC, she had reportedly been detained last year when trying to enter a stadium dressed as a boy.

Her death sparked an outcry, with many calling on FIFA to ban Iran and for fans to boycott matches.

Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili at the time dismissed reports she had been told she would be jailed for six months as "fabricated rumours and hearsay.”

And Khodayari's father told Mehr news agency that she did not "sacrifice" herself for any cause.

Shadow of FIFA

Ahead of Qatar 2022, Iran has come under pressure from FIFA to allow women to attend this round of World Cup qualifiers.

The ban on women in stadiums is not written into law or regulations, but it has been strictly enforced.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women have only had rare access to stadiums in Iran.

About 20 Irish women attended a World Cup qualifier in 2001, and four years later a few dozen Iranian women were allowed to watch the national "Team Melli" take on Bahrain.

In October, as many as 100 Iranian "handpicked" women entered Azadi for a friendly against Bolivia.

But the day after, the prosecutor general warned there would be no repeat, saying it would "lead to sin.”

The issue has been divisive in Iran.

The reformist camp has welcomed the decision to allow women into Thursday's match, while conservatives have argued that football is not a priority for women.

The Donya-e-Eqtesad financial newspaper called it "a step to weaken a taboo and also free Iran's football of the looming shadow of FIFA's punishment.”

But the ultra-conservative Keyhan daily said women were more concerned about economic issues

"There are many girls still single and at home, afraid of the cost of marriage. The government should be thinking of this, not sending them to stadiums," it quoted a mother as saying.

Photo: IRNA

Iran Women See New Opportunities Alongside Old Barriers

Saba was just 25 when she left her design job in New York to work on a project renovating an art gallery back in her hometown Tehran.

Within months, she won three more contracts to do up galleries and the lobby of an apartment complex.

"I had dreamt of building my own company, but I hadn't expected it to happen any time soon. If I had stayed in New York, I wouldn't have had this chance," said Saba, now 27.

She says the position of women in Iran has changed a lot over the past decade. 

"People now trust women in management positions. Still it's hard, especially on a construction site. But it's hard anywhere. It's hard in New York," she told AFP.

As the Islamic republic marks its 40th birthday, few issues are more politically sensitive or full of contradictions than the status of women.

After the revolution, Islamic laws gave women a lower legal status than men, requiring them, for example, in many cases to gain permission from their father or husband to leave the country.

They are considered to have half the value of men in various legal aspects such as inheritance and testimony in court.

'A Path Forward'

But the Islamic republic also encouraged education for women, who now outnumber men at universities -- a development that has transformed expectations and overturned centuries-old traditions.

"Going to university was a path forward for girls like us who did not want to end up like our mothers in a traditional society," said Mina, a 25-year-old linguistics student in Tehran.

Mina didn't tell her father she was studying for the university entrance exam. 

"He couldn't believe it when I was accepted, that I would go to some other city to live. He actually stopped talking to me for some time," she said.

"Whatever you do, your gender is the deciding factor," said 26-year-old archaeology student Sara.

It makes you believe that you have to have kids, you have to be modest. You can barely believe that you can be independent, be seen as an individual with a character," she added.

She said discrimination was rife in her field.

"Male archaeologists prefer not to work with women even if they're competent. They say it's just trouble. The women must keep their hijab at all times... they won't be taken seriously by laborers," she said. 

"If a woman is successful in a line of work like this, she's fought very hard. And not all women are capable of fighting so much."

'Tool of Male Arousal'

Iran's rulers claim that Islamic gender laws—particularly "hijab" rules that require women to wear a headscarf and modest clothing—are designed to protect women.

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted in 2018 that the #MeToo movement was evidence of how Western society had failed women. 

"The Western model for women is symbolic of consumerism, cosmetics, showing off for men as a tool of male sexual arousal," he wrote.

Nonetheless, clothing norms in Iran have gradually but significantly changed in recent years.

It is now unremarkable, especially in wealthier areas, to see women in tight jeans with loose, colorful headscarves.

The morality police that patrolled the streets, adjusting headscarves or bursting into cafes to make sure any couples were related, are now rarely seen.

'Nothing Lke It Was'

The authorities still draw the line at actively protesting the compulsory hijab: several women were arrested last year for doing so, and a prominent rights lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, jailed after taking on their cases. 

But many also recall how much they have clawed back since the early days of the revolution. 

"It's nothing like it was. You couldn't even get a lift with a male friend," said a female journalist in Tehran.

"We were terrified of being stopped, because they were out there, checking cars. Or going for lunch with a (male) friend—it would never happen! Now no one even thinks twice about these things."

Many were still dismayed that "moderate" President Hassan Rouhani, who ran on promises to improve citizens' rights, again failed to appoint a female minister after his 2017 re-election.  

"There is a glass ceiling and it will continue," said Fereshteh Sadeghi, a political journalist in Tehran. 

"When Rouhani reached power it seems he didn't want to fall out with the ayatollahs, and backed down. 

"Little by little, women are getting their rights but for now there is no women's movement."

Photo Credit: IRNA

Iran VP Says Government Against Using Force Over Hijab

Iran's vice president for women's affairs insisted Wednesday the government opposed using "force" to ensure women wear the hijab, after a spate of protests stirred debate over the mandatory headscarf.

Massoumeh Ebtekar told a press conference in Tehran that every country has a dress code: "There is no city in the world where you can walk naked in the streets and you won't be approached by a particular regulatory body."

She said Iran's hijab laws—which require women to wear a headscarf and long coat, as well as banning shorts for men—were a "social regulation."

"Our position is that it's a regulation but the use of force—we don't go along with that type of enforcement," she said.

"That is contrary to the basic principles and philosophy that the government of (President Hassan) Rouhani follows." Her comments follow a string of protests, mostly in Tehran, in which more than a dozen woman have stood in main thoroughfares without their headscarves.

The women risk prison sentences of up to two months for not wearing the headscarf, but up to 10 years if they are found to be encouraging others. Tehran police chief Hossein Rahimi took a rather tougher line than Ebtekar earlier this week, telling the conservative Fars news agency that Islamic laws were "obligatory for all citizens."

"These people will be firmly dealt with by the police," he said. He was responding to widespread criticism on social media after a video showed an officer shoving one of the women protesters off a plinth. "We have reminded our officers to comply with legal requirements when dealing with all people," said Rahimi.

In practice clothing rules have been steadily eroding for years, with many women wearing loose and colorful headscarves and letting them drop entirely, particularly in wealthier areas.

Since Rouhani came to power in 2013, the presence of the morality police who enforced clothing rules has been greatly reduced. Ebtekar said the government needs "this dialogue" with the younger generation, which no longer shares the same values as those who grew up during the 1979 revolution.

But she defended Iran's record on female empowerment, saying the Islamic republic had brought "true advancement" for women in higher education, politics and sports.

Iranian society is generally freer for women than many conservative Islamic countries, but activists complain they are still under-represented in government, particularly after Rouhani again failed to appoint a single female minister last summer.

Women also have less weight than men in Iran's Islamic legal system, including less right to inheritance and a ban on leaving the country without male permission.

Photo Credit: Wikicommons