Iranian Housewives Speak Out on International Women's Day

International Women's Day is an opportunity to highlight the challenges, suffering and hidden victories that women experience all over the world: from occupational inequalities to being sidelined in society, to having to fight to attain the most basic human rights. In this article to mark International Women’s Day, two Iranian housewives share their stories.

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Rouhangiz is now approaching 60 years old. She is the mother of four children, each of whom has now found their own path in life. She tells IranWire about her youth and her decision to stay home: a decision that in those days she thought would satisfy her. But over time, she regretted it.

"I was disappointed,” she says. “I was a teacher, and when my eldest daughter was born I said I would stay at home for a few months to raise my children. We didn’t need money and my husband was doing well. So those few months at home turned into a lifetime, and then other kids came. I became a housewife who worked tirelessly from morning till night without leave or pay. I even heard people say I was pursuing my own comfort by sitting around at home.”

Housekeeping is a laborious job for which people are not directly paid, and sometimes causes them to become completely dependent on other family members. In Iranian law, "housekeeping" is a gendered occupation: one specifically ascribed to women, who are generally dependent on a father or husband. 

The Reluctant Housewife

"I took a year off without pay," says Rouhangiz. "In 1979, when my daughter was born, the conditions were not like those today that allow working women to have maternity leave... Or maybe they were, and I didn’t know. 

“My teaching job was in the village. I had already had one miscarriage and I didn’t want it to happen again. I applied for leave from the eighth month of pregnancy and stayed home. When my daughter was six months old, I wanted to return to work, but my husband said 'To whom do you expect to leave a six-month-old child? You have everything you need; stay home and raise your children.' I had a guilty conscience and so I opted to stay home."

Rouhangiz's husband died two to three years ago. Her children are now grown up and each has their own home and life. "I am a capable woman,” she says. “I’m not sick or bedridden, but my life has been devoted to housekeeping and home affairs. My husband's job was freelance, may God have mercy on his soul, and he didn’t have a pension. If he hadn’t left me some savings in the bank, God knows how I would have managed my expenses.

“I constantly think about the fact that in all these years I haven’t been able to step out of the four walls of the house, or even, when I was sick to rest safely without any worries, not even for a single day, without thinking about the house and children. I do feel sorry for myself."

No Financial Support

One of the major problems for housewives is the lack of insurance and pensions. In the 2000s rumors circulated about insurance being provided for housewives, and a budget was supposed to be set in aid of this. The Welfare Organization was appointed as the custodian of this issue. Under the initial plans, housewives' insurance was to be given to women who were not employed, students or apprentices and who were aged between 22 and 60. The plan also called for housewives to be entitled to a pension of their own after paying in 20 years of insurance premiums.

The program has cropped up in the news from time to time since then, but only sporadically and with limited news to report. From the very beginning the Welfare Organization had declared its inability to fulfil its obligations, so the insurance plan was handed to the Ministry of Welfare. But this ministry also said implementing such a plan was not easy and suggested it would be better to change the insurance plan for housewives to "insurance for needy housewives": according to the new plan, only women who are homeless or sick were to be covered.

In 2008 the plan seemed to be progressing. It was decided that housekeeping should be subject to the "Regulations for the Insurance of Professionals and Freelancers". Thus social security insurance for housewives was established and implemented based on the usual criteria for professionals. To this day, however, there are still no definite statistics on how many of the 20 million known Iranian housewives have been able to use this insurance program, or have received government funding and pensions.

Drowning in Depression

Moloud is a young woman who has one child. Life, she says, has always been difficult for her. "I was very young when my parents separated,” she tells IranWire. “I took care of my three-year-old sister while I myself was still a child. My mother wasn’t well either. We lived in a city in which divorce was a taboo, and we struggled with cultural issues in addition to securing a livelihood. That was how I started working at the age of 17 and gradually became independent. I tried to build my identity on working. I taught English, and my salary was low, but over time they [the school] got to know me and my income increased.”

After several years of striving to forge a new life for herself, Moloud met her future husband. "He lived in another city and at the beginning of our life together I had to sacrifice everything: I left my job, friends and family behind to join him. I was unemployed for a few months, but after a while I started teaching English again. 

“For some time, life went on almost as I wanted it. But then one day I found out I was pregnant. I was two months along at the time, the heart of the foetus had formed, and with the knowledge I had of myself and my husband, I knew I had no option but to keep the baby."

The decision to keep the baby, which Moloud concedes is now "her most valuable asset in life", forced her to give up her job. "I stopped working when I was eight months pregnant,” she says. “My life changed after my child was born. The fact was that I had decided to have a child at the age of 35, but this happened 10 years earlier and this change wasn’t very simple. Even for me, having overcome various challenges, having a child was the most difficult thing imaginable. It was like losing everything I had gained over the years: work, friends, being a teacher, being a spouse. I became a new mother who had to take care of a child alone."

Most housewives complain that no one has a positive view of what they do. This feeling is more prevalent for women who were once engaged in social and out-of-house activities and are now consigned to a life indoors. Moloud is one of these, despite having a husband; he is always out during the day, working as a clerk. "Being all alone raising my child left me drowning in depression when my child got a little older and became more independent,” she says. “This was something I hadn’t experienced in previous years, despite all the difficulties. I felt I wasn’t useful, that I wasn’t a good mother; I was more helpless than ever before."

Losing her Identity

"I feel that staying at home and just being a mother has made me more patient and sad at the same time,” Moloud says. “I have tried to reclaim my identity, but society makes childbearing very difficult for mothers."

Housewives all face the same problem of monotonous daily work: cleaning, cooking, shopping, babysitting and periodic entertaining. In patriarchal societies like Iran’s the economic value of women's work at home is not clear. Women with children are deprived of the quality of association they want with others, and sometimes their satisfaction with married life decreases as a consequence.

Moloud says that even the people closest to her consider housekeeping and childbearing as her only duty. "Although I have a caring husband, none of what society expects of me would be expected of him. I was even criticized because I stopped breastfeeding my child before the age of two. Whenever anything happened to him, I felt it was because of my bad decision-making that he had become weak."

This young woman says she has "has changed into another person” since giving birth. “Often,” she says, “I feel helpless and desperate, as a woman who has not yet been able to return to her past situation. I know for a fact that I don’t want to be worn out."

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