COVID-19 Depressed Women’s Employment Everywhere, and More So in Iran

The coronavirus pandemic has had a regressive impact on women’s economic outcomes worldwide. Women’s jobs have been 1.8 times more vulnerable than men’s jobs. In Iran, too, the closures and the pandemic have depressed women’s already low economic participation rates by about 20 percent. This paper compares pre-COVID/end of 2019 with the end of 2020 Iranian labor market outcomes, using data from the Statistical Office of Iran. Since the sanctions environment remained unchanged between these two points in time, under the Rouhani government, one can deduct that the differences mainly resulted from the economic impact of the pandemic. Unfortunately, the data for 2021 has not yet been released.