A Survey of Gender Inequality in Irans Job Market: with the use of Decent Work indicators (in Persian)

Approximately half of employees over the world work in the gender specific jobs where at least 80 percent of the employees belong to the same gender. In fact, non-agricultural jobs specific to men are seven times more than those of women. This phenomenon shows inflexibility of job market it leads to the reduction in especially for women and decreases the economic efficiency (Anker, 1998). Gender-wise job discrimination is indicative of not only gender-wise inequality in job opportunities. Indeed, jobs specific to women are often less paid, lower in position and more limited in possibilities of promotion than those of men moreover it is proved that more equality of men and women in a job has a negative effect on its wage (Golden, 2002). It is necessary to calculate and compare the indicators showing the different aspects of job market gender-wise so as to examine the gender discrimination status in the job market. Using a collection of Decent Work indicators, which express job market status in a country, this paper tries to calculate the extent of gender discrimination in Irans job market in various and analyzer the trends of its changes with the pass of time. Therefore, firstly the definitions and concepts of 23 Decent Work Indicators are offered. Then 19 indicators pertaining to gender discrimination are introduced and 11 indicators, possible to be calculated with the use of household employment and unemployment statistical time series data within 1997 and 2003, are calculated for the whole country gender-wise. The results of the research shows that although womens participation in the job market and their status in this market have enjoyed a growing trend in the period surveyed, in most cases women do not have the same access to equal opportunities in job market as men do.