Iran: Women Unemployment, Still High

I am checking the report for last year, Spring 2010 to Winter 2011, the statistics on women are very interesting.

• The unemployment among women still is much higher than unemployment among men: %20.5 versus %11.9 overall, %39.7 for women age 15 to 29 years versus %21.8 for men of the same age group. 
• The increase in unemployment for women is also higher than the increase in unemployment for men. Women age 15 to 29 years experience %8.7 increase in unemployment from the previous year, for men age 15 to 29 years old this has been %2.1. This means a proportionally larger number of women are unemployed. This confirms previous findings (Abbasi and Dadpay among others) that youth and women are the most vulnerable group in Iran's labor market. They usually feel the burden of economic downturns first. 
• Still close to one out of every three women work in agriculture, %28 versus %17.5 for men. Still almost half work in services, %47.6 of women and %48.8 of men.

Question is what should be the focus to combat women unemployment? Employment opportunities equality might be the first place to start. The disproportional unemployment among women might be hinting at a still segregated labor market.

Of course these are only the descriptive analysis and some very basic intuitions. More can be found out through modeling and further analysis.