Iran on the Move—Photos by Peyman Hooshmandzadeh

 

A man struggling under a giant carpet, a miniature mini-Ferris-wheel en transit, Iranian state agents removing an “illegal” satellite aerial — these are just a few of the images that illustrate the discussion of “Sanctions, Labor and Employment in Iran,” held by the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation. The online seminar also provided stark statistics about work in Iran in the time between the 2022 nationwide cost of living strikes and protests for Woman, Life, Freedom, which also began last year and continue until today. According to Pooya Alaedini, from the University of Tehran’s Faculty of Social Sciences, female unemployment rate in the first half of 2021–22 stood at 16.6 per cent, as opposed to 19.9 per cent in 2017–18. Unemployment rates also went down for men — 7.8 per cent in 2021–22 compared to 10.01 per cent in 2017–18. These falling rates, Alaedini maintained were not entirely good news; they had been influenced by Covid, which shrunk the overall numbers of people available to work, the result of the virus in other countries.

US sanctions against Iranian oil exports also significantly damaged jobs and living standards in the country. Government workers suffered under austerity measures the Islamic Republic imposed because of­­ sanctions. Farmers and agricultural workers were the hardest hit, in part due to ongoing water shortages and drought.

During 2021–22, male participation in the labor force stood at 68.9 per cent. For women — despite high rates of university education — it was only 13.6 per cent.

For the young, between the ages of 18 and 35, unemployment figures were 16.6 per cent over the same period. While for women the same age, it was a whopping 28.3 per cent.

Importantly, participation for female college graduates in the labor force was 50.5 per cent against women’s overall labor force participation, at just 13.6 per cent. Even so, anecdotal evidence suggests that only low paying employment is available for highly educated women. So higher education, for women at least, was no guarantee of better paying jobs.

During the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation seminar, the political comparative historical sociologist Zep Kalb noted that the main participants in the cost of living and food protests were not Iran’s professional class, but farmers, contract workers (especially those in the oil and gas sector), teachers and pensioners.  These 2021–22 figures were reported before the Woman Life Freedom protests rocked Iran, starting in the autumn of last year. In those nationwide demonstrations women were protesting against wearing the hijab as well as their lack of job and life opportunities.

Peyman Hooshmandzadeh’s photographs of Iran at work do not show the professional classes at work in their private businesses, government offices or in health care. His view is rather from the street; ordinary people going about their daily lives and jobs, in the country’s capital, Tehran, and the tenth century religious city of Mashhad. Considering what the statistics reveal, it’s no wonder that women are seemingly absent.

—Malu Halasa

 


 

 

Captions for photographs translated from Persian by Salar Abdoh.

 

Peyman Hooshmandzadeh is a photographer, born in Tehran, Iran, in 1969. He has a BA in photography from Azad University. Since his first exhibition in 1995, Hooshmandzadeh has had over eighty solo exhibitions and has participated in numerous group shows, at home and abroad. He has worked as a photojournalist for Iranian newspapers and agencies, as well as various international organisations — including Reuters. He is the winner of dozens of national and international photographic awards. His work has been shown in such venues as the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art and Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

Malu Halasa, Literary Editor at The Markaz Review, is editing the anthology Woman Life Freedom, Voices and Art from the Women’s Protests in Iran, to be published by Saqi Books, September 2023. She curated Transit Tehran in London: Art and Documentary from Iran, the Atrium Gallery, London School of Economics, 2009; and Culture in Defiance: Continuing Traditions of Satire, Art and the Struggle for Freedom in Syria, the Prince Claus Fund Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2012. This exhibition toured and was shown in Rich Mix, in London, as part of the 2013 Shubbak Festival; and at the Rundetårn, Copenhagen. Malu was the gofer for Syrian graffiti artists, in the Victorian & Albert Museum’s exhibition Disobedient Objects, 2015. She participated in Nope to Hope:Graphic and Politics 2008–18, London’s Design Museum, an exhibition that was taken down off museum walls by the artists and participants, after the Design Museum held a reception at the exhibition for the UK arms trade. She worked with Venetia Porter at the British Museum to bring Syrian artists and their work to the museum’s permanent collection. She is currently working on an anthology of writing, art and photography from the women’s protests in Iran.

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