Woman Workers

A very brief look at working conditions in Iranian factories

Largely based on Maryam Mohseni's "Vazi'at-e kargaran-e zan dar iran", published in Jens-e dovom, 4th edition, Development Press, Tehran, 1378.

The interview, transl.: TZ, was published in the same edition, under the title "Vazi'at-e zanan-e kargaran dar yek karkhane-ye darusazi".

Tirdad Zolghadr

In Iran, woman workers are employed in various sectors, and under very different conditions. But as a general trend, after the revolution, the larger factories gradually diminished the number of female workers. To a certain point, this was due to the usual ideological reasons – women and men working together in the same environment was deemed unacceptable and licentious. So women were rarely hired, and when they were, they were usually women who didn't have husbands to secure the family income (i.e. who were widowed, divorced, or whose husbands were addicts, vagrants, criminals, etc). Some were single women who had to shoulder a family income due to dysfunctional fathers. Employing these women was seen as a way to prevent poverty crimes and prostitution.

During the postwar period of reconstruction, the employers and managing directors of larger factories continued to avoid hiring women as best they could. Perhaps no longer for ideological reasons as much as for economic ones, i.e. for fear that maternal leave, nurseries and similar issues would create unnecessary costs.

When women started losing their jobs during the economic crisis of 1992-93, many of them staged street protests, as in the case of the 120 women who were laid off at the "Jame'e Alsadegh" factory in Mashhad, and who gathered in front of the company headquarters to protest. Or the 118 woman workers of the "Iran Jikai" factory in Rasht.

Officially, during 1996, women officially counted 4.33% of the factory workers in Iran, and constituted 4.74% of all working women. In 1997, the factories counting more than 10 employees employed an average of 5.57% women.

The unofficial figures, however, would be higher.

Women workers have repeatedly been subject to petty and degrading forms of discrimination, such as restricted use of sports facilities, and differences in benefits. For example, sick leave for women - single or married – amounts to 66% of their daily income. This is equally the case for single men. Married men, however, receive 75%.

The following is an interview with Ms Shamsi Hojati, a onetime militant for worker's rights who works in the laboratory of a factory for pharmaceutical products.

by Fatemeh Izdepahani

FI  How long have you been working in this factory, and how did you get where you are today?

SH  I was hired in October 1983. I had just obtained my college diploma, and I wanted to go to university. But my family was in financial difficulty, and so I decided to get a job in the production sector in this company, through an acquaintance of mine. Back then, there were few people with diplomas working in factories.

In the company, the managers' attitudes toward the employees were intolerable, especially for me. So I eventually became a spokesperson for the factory workers, and I would hold speeches defending workers' rights. You see, it was shortly after the revolution, and things like that were not exactly uncommon. So the board of directors, which knew about my activities and my influence on the workers, sacked the foreman, and put me to work in the factory laboratories to get me away from my colleagues, and I was forced to stop what I had been doing. Back then, you see, we hadn't been privatized yet, and we were under the auspices of the Labor Ministry, and so a number of the managers actually backed workers' rights. The atmosphere was very different then.

In any case, as you can see, my promotion was thoroughly accidental, considering that there are college graduates who are still doing packaging work after twenty years.

FI  What's working in the production sector like? Can workers specialize?

SH  Well, employees in the production sector - particularly the women – start with packaging, and after many years, they may, in the best of cases, be promoted to operating heavy machinery. You can't speak of any specialization other than that.

FI  How many of the employees are literate?

SH  There was a calculated effort to hire graduates over the last twenty years. Illiterate or semi-literate women used to be the majority, but they've either retired, or quit.

FI  Is recruiting graduates "official" or "contractual" [rasmi or gharardadi, i.e. with or without work benefits]?

SH  Ever since we've been privatized, we haven't had any "official" employees at all. Girls are hired in the packaging sector on a six-month basis. It's striking how many college graduates are applying for work in those sectors, ever since the unemployment rate rose. And the problem is that these girls, in order to ensure another contract after those six months, accept the most awful work conditions. For one thing, they work at an incredible rate, which makes things difficult for the older employees, who have to keep up, and try and pack those pills as quickly as the young ones. So now there's a new sense of competition that is extremely counterproductive.

And that competition is particularly strong among women. A number of times, I've witnessed college graduates who, after many years of work and effort, and also by using their connections, obtain good positions in the laboratories or in the administration. Upon which the others – the other women, that is – campaign so strongly against them that they wind up being transferred back to the packaging sector.

FI  Are there women in administrative posts?

SH  Yes, there is a woman on the board of directors, who has a doctorate in pharmacy.

FI  Did her promotion to the post have a positive influence on the working conditions of the other women?

SH  Unfortunately, I have to say that this matter only confirms the other developments I've been talking about. When they announced that they were hiring someone for that managerial post, there were 120 candidates. So in the face of so much competition - out of fear for her post, or out of a general fear of changes - the woman in question has never even mentioned women's difficulties, or spoken out in defense of worker's rights, and one might even say that certain men have done a better job in that respect.

FI  What about workers' training?

SH  Ever since privatization, nothing whatsoever has happened on that level, neither for the men nor for the women. Actually, there isn't a single training program, technical or otherwise. In the best of cases, whenever the factory buys new equipment, it sends workers over to other factories to watch over people's shoulders, and learn how to use the new machinery that way. This wasn't the case when we belonged to the public sector.

But then again, back then there were other problems. For example, when the Ministry offered us courses, such as language, computer or accounting courses, the management wouldn't post them, and when we found out through other channels, the management would come up with cheap excuses ('if you go, then many others will want to go too, and in the end it'll be one big mess'). Sometimes they'd actually go to those classes themselves.

In any case, whenever we did wind up registering, they wouldn't give us time off, or they didn't pay us for the time spent in class as they were supposed to. They'd do everything to discourage us. And this had its reasons; the courses would often change the workers' attitudes and demands, which wasn't something the management was keen on.

Today, the same thing goes for the employees who pursue university studies. In order to avoid any changes in the employees' status, the management does everything to make their lives miserable, until they either quit their jobs - despite the current unemployment rate - or until they give up on their studies.

FI  How come there are more women than men in the pharmaceutical industry?

SH  Perhaps the delicacy of the packaging work demands more patience than men can come up with. But seriously, in my opinion, it has to do with the simple fact that the management thinks women are less hassle.

The upper-level management is entirely in the hands of men, who feel they work better with members of the opposite sex. Widows or young women who have to produce a family income are willing to accept anything that is demanded of them, for fear of being kicked out. Men, on the other hand, have issues of pride, and are not always as willing to listen to their bosses - whether they need the job or not. And sure enough, they get kicked out sometimes.

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