An editor at a Tehran publishing house, an online yoga instructor, and a rural mother who sells homemade food via Instagram are just three of many Iranian women whose livelihoods have been ruined by their country's ongoing Internet blackout.
Three Internet shutdowns in Iran in recent months -- including the current blackout, the longest on record -- have dealt a devastating blow to the economy. And in many cases, it is women who are feeling the impact most.
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"I was just learning to stand on my own two feet, but I can't afford reliable VPN access. It's too expensive and doesn't work properly," the young woman said. For her own safety, she cannot be named because RFE/RL is banned in Iran.
"I'm lucky because I live with my parents, but I know colleagues who can no longer pay their rent," she added.
"With the war and the Internet shutdown, life has stopped for many," she said, describing the digital blackout as "torture."
'Internet Apartheid'
The Islamic republic imposed the latest Internet shutdown on February 28 amid US and Israeli attacks on the country.
Although Washington and Tehran reached a fragile cease-fire on April 8, Internet access has still not been fully restored, leaving citizens in digital darkness for more than two months. Only those who can afford expensive anti-filtering tools -- along with individuals granted state-approved access -- are able to get online.
"Just six months ago, millions of Iranian women operated thriving businesses online. The bloody crackdown of January 8-9 and the war with the US, combined with the new regime of Internet apartheid, have had a major impact on that once-thriving ecosystem," Emily Blout, a media scholar and author of Media And Power In Modern Iran, told Radio Farda.
"The Internet, once a vital lifeline for so many Iranian businesses, is now out of reach or unaffordable to all but an elite cohort," she said.
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Gholamhossein Mohammadi, a deputy labor minister, said in April that, according to government estimates, the war had resulted in the loss of 1 million jobs and the direct or indirect unemployment of 2 million people.
Also speaking in April, Zahra Behruz Azar, vice president for women and family affairs, said the Internet cuts had severely restricted women's "informal jobs." She added that roughly one-third of unemployment insurance claims filed during the previous 40 days had been submitted by women.
Officials say the female employment participation rate in Iran is 18 percent. But many women had set up or been employed in small online businesses.
Many of them have lost their earnings, including women running online businesses and those working in online sales. Women providing online services -- including teachers, mental health professionals, and fitness instructors -- have also been hit hard.
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War And Internet Blackout Push Iran's Economy Even Further Toward The BrinkWomen employed in other sectors vulnerable to Internet disruptions, including publishing and translation services, have likewise faced mass layoffs.
"Many women are employed in these industries, and because these jobs were highly vulnerable, many women have become unemployed," a book editor in Tehran, who also can't be named, told Radio Farda.
The editor said she had worked for both an advertising company and a publishing house. Both companies laid off 80 percent of their staff, the majority of them women. She said the advertising company dismissed her entirely, while the publishing house retained her but cut her salary in half.
'Parallel Labor Market'
It's not just the urban middle classes that have been hit.
Leila, a resident of a village near Marand in northwestern Iran, used to support her family by selling homemade food through her Instagram page. Over the past five years, she managed to provide for herself, her husband, and their 8-year-old child by building a loyal customer base online.
Leila, who recently spoke to Atiye Online, an Iran-based website focusing on social issues, said she had lost a large part of her market, and sales of her products have nearly dropped to zero.
"Many of my customers had discovered my page through recommendations from previous buyers who were satisfied with my work," she said. "But the Internet shutdowns destroyed much of that connection. Now I've had to spend 5 million tomans (some $40) on VPNs just so I might still be able to make some sales, even if only a little."
Azam Bahrami, a researcher based in Turin, Italy, told Radio Farda that the Internet had created a lifeline for many women, including those living in smaller cities and villages, that has now been taken away.
"The Internet had created a parallel labor market for women, giving them access to information and allowing them to work from home while letting them take care of their child and the elderly," she said.
Azam Bahrami
Sociologist Simin Kazemi blamed entrenched gender stereotypes for the disproportionate impact of layoffs on women.
"These stereotypes, which portray women's employment as less essential than men's, make women the primary victims during layoffs because, in the collective mindset, women are still not viewed as the family breadwinners," Kazemi said in an interview with the semiofficial ILNA news agency.
She noted that 22.5 percent of Iranian households are headed by women and that these households are among the country's poorest and most vulnerable.
"Women's unemployment is not considered a major social problem and is treated as something normal," she said. "The reason is that women's employment itself is not considered essential."
Kazemi warned that rising unemployment among women, particularly female heads of household, could push a large segment of the population into extreme poverty.