Internet blockades in Iran: A devastating blow to the economy, women are often the ones who feel the consequences the most

An editor at a publishing house in Tehran, an online yoga instructor, and a rural mother who sells homemade food on Instagram are just three of the many women in Iran whose livelihoods have been destroyed by their country's ongoing internet blockades.

Three internet shutdowns in Iran in recent months – including the current one, the longest in history – have dealt a devastating blow to the economy. And in many cases, it is women who are feeling the consequences the most.

A yoga instructor in Tehran told Radio Farda (Radio Free Europe's Iranian service) that internet restrictions have prevented her from giving online classes, depriving her of her only source of income.

"I've just started to become independent, but I can't afford reliable VPN access. It's too expensive and it doesn't work properly," said the young woman. For her safety, Radio Free Europe (RFE) cannot give her name because RFE/RL is banned in Iran.

"I'm lucky to 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 blockade as "torture."

"Internet apartheid"

The Islamic Republic began its latest internet blockade on February 28th amid US and Israeli attacks on the country.

Although Washington and Tehran reached a fragile truce on April 8, internet access has not yet been fully restored, leaving citizens in digital darkness for more than two months. Only those who can afford expensive software to bypass the blockade, along with individuals granted access by the state, are able to connect to the internet.

"Just six months ago, millions of Iranian women were running successful online businesses. The bloody crackdown on January 8-9 and the war with the US, combined with the new regime of internet apartheid, have had a major impact on this once prosperous ecosystem," Emily Blaut, a media researcher and author of "Media and Power in Modern Iran," told Radio Farda.

"The internet – once vital to the operation of so many Iranian businesses – is now out of reach or inaccessible to all but an elite cohort," she added.

Gholamhossein Mohammadi, deputy labor minister, said in April that, according to government estimates, the war had resulted in the loss of one million jobs and the direct or indirect unemployment of two million people.

Also in April, Zahra Behruz Azar, vice president for women and family affairs, said that internet shutdowns had severely limited women's "informal jobs." She added that about a third of unemployment claims in the past 40 days had been filed by women.

Officials say the female employment rate in Iran is 18 percent. However, many women have founded or are employed by small online businesses.

Many have lost their income, including women who run online businesses and those who work in online sales. Women who provide online services – including teachers, mental health experts and fitness instructors – have also been hit hard.

Women employed in other sectors vulnerable to internet outages, including publishing and translation services, have also faced mass layoffs.

"Many women are employed in these sectors and since these jobs were very vulnerable, many women became unemployed," an editor at a publishing house in Tehran, whose name we also cannot mention, told Radio Farda.

The editor said she worked for both an advertising agency and a publishing house. Both companies laid off 80 percent of their employees, mostly women. She said the advertising agency laid her off completely, while the publishing house kept her on, but with her salary cut in half.

"Parallel labor market"

It's not just the urban middle class that's affected.

Leyla, who lives in a village near Marand in northwestern Iran, has supported her family by selling homemade food through her Instagram page. Over the past five years, she has managed to support herself, her husband and their eight-year-old child, building a loyal online customer base.

Leyla, who recently spoke to Atiye Online, an Iranian portal that focuses on social issues, said she had lost a large part of her market and that sales of her products had almost dropped to zero.

"Many of my customers discovered my site through recommendations from previous customers who were happy with my work," she said. "But the internet outages have destroyed a lot of that connection. Now I've had to spend five million tomans (about $40) on VPNs just to maybe still make some sales, even if just a little."

Azam Bahrami, a researcher from Turin, Italy, told Radio Farda that the internet has brought salvation to many women, including those living in smaller towns and villages, which is now being taken away from them.

"The internet has created a parallel labor market for women, giving them access to information and allowing them to work from home while allowing them to care for their children and elders," she said.

Sociologist Simin Kazemi blamed entrenched gender stereotypes for the disproportionate impact of layoffs on women.

"These stereotypes, which portray women's employment as less important than men's, make women the primary victims during layoffs because, in the collective mentality, women are not yet considered the breadwinners of the family," Kazemi said in an interview with the ILNA news agency.

She pointed out that 22,5 percent of Iranian households are headed by women and that these households are among the poorest and most vulnerable in the country.

"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 necessary."

Kazemi warned that rising unemployment among women – especially women who are heads of households – could push a large portion of the population into extreme poverty.