Gender and Entrepreneurship in Iran: Microenterprise and the Informal Sector

232 Pages·2013·0.97 MB·English

by  Roksana Bahramitash (auth.)

Gender and Entrepreneurship
in Iran
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Gender and Entrepreneurship
in Iran
Microenterprise and the Informal Sector
Roksana Bahramitash
GENDER AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN IRAN
Copyright © Roksana Bahramitash, 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-34286-7
All rights reserved.
First published in 2013 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the
United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth
Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of
the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan
Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998,
of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above
companies and has companies and representatives throughout the
world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United
States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-46541-5 ISBN 978-1-137-33923-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137339232
Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Bahramitash, Roksana, 1956–
Gender and entrepreneurship in Iran : microenterprise and the
informal sector / by Roksana Bahramitash.
pages cm
1. Self-e mployed women—I ran. 2. Women—I ran— Employment.
3. Informal sector (Economics)—I ran. 4. Small business—I ran. 5.
Entrepreneurship— Iran. I. Title.
HD6072.6.I7B34 2013
331.40955—d c23 2013019244
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: October 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to my dear brother, Mr. Ramin Bahramitash,
with my love and admiration for endurance.
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Tehran 1
1 The Other Women and the Other Economy 21
2 Gender, Micro-E ntrepreneurship,
and the Informal Economy 43
3 Women’s Employment in Iran:
Entering the Formal Sector 73
4 Low-I ncome Female Workers,
Micro- Entrepreneurs, and the Informal Sector 101
5 Low-I ncome Male Workers and Micro-E ntrepreneurs:
Comparing the Male and Female Samples 149
Conclusion: Some Insight for Forward-Looking Initiatives 171
Appendix 189
Notes 197
References 203
Index 221
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Acknowledgments
This project started in 2008, after I finished my two recent books on
Iran: Veiled Employment: Islamism and the Political Economy of Wom-
en’s Employment in Iran and Gender in Contemporary Iran. The idea
for the book originated in fieldwork I carried out for my earlier books,
when I saw that working mainly on the formal sector overlooks an
important part of the story. And the value of firsthand data, especially
on Iran, in my view, remains extremely critical to the field of sociology
of development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
The book has been a labor of love and has gone through several
redrafts. As many of us who work on the MENA region and espe-
cially on Iran are aware, data on Iran become quickly outdated, and
every single draft had to be updated. Even this current version ended
up having data from before the recent round of sanctions with their
massive crippling impact, the worst of which occurred in November
2012. It led to the devaluation of rials by nearly a quarter, though
more recently some of its value has been regained.
One of my major challenges in writing this book has been the fact
that literature on poverty, gender, and microenterprise in MENA is
extremely lean, and I have had to spend a great deal of time trying to
digest the rich literature on Latin America and South Asia in order to
apply it to Iran.
In this rather difficult path I have been assisted by top academics
such as Eric Hooglund, who read numerous redrafts and has been the
strongest critic of the work but at the same time my greatest source
of real support.
There have been other scholars, such as my colleagues Jennifer
Olmsted and Hadi Salehi-Esfahani, and scholarly associations, such as
the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE), whose
academic support has been indispensable. On the topic of Islam, my
book has benefited from the support of a dear friend and a unique
scholar, Patric Brodeur. His support has been truly important, as he
has provided me with an intellectual home, and I have been affiliated
with his Canada Research Chair at University of Montreal. Shahram