Hot Cuppa

The level of women’s participation in Iranian labor market is far below of its average in the OECD countries. According to the official statistics women's contribution accounts only for 14% of the whole labor market. There is no surprise that like many other counties the share of women in the middle and senior managerial positions is even quite lower than their average share in the market.

Nevertheless a new wave of entering into the market by women in the next few years would be expected. The wave is the result of rapid increase of women’s share in the higher education system. Since 2003 the girls outperformed boys in the tough entrance exams of the universities. The last year statistics says that 65% of the new enrollment in the universities made by women.

Well, such a trend will cause some important changes in the supply side of the labor market in terms of the quality and the quantity of labor force. Earning a university degree will increase the tendency of a woman to search for a job. This means that the number of job seekers will increase in upcoming years. This could be justified by considering the fact that the men in any case will participate in the market, no matter they go to the university or not, while for the women this is not the case. A fixed amount of supply of the male labour force and increased supply of the female ones simply means higher number of people volunteered to work. Having taken the number of jobs as an exogenous variable, at least in the short term, this will deepen the unemployment issue of the country. It also will shift the income distribution toward the middle class people, where both man and woman use to work and worsen it against the low skill workers class. In a country with current 16% rate of employment such a wave would be a new major challenge for the policy makers and social planners in the coming years.