Women's Labor & Modernization: A Historical Overview

The paper looks at the history of women’s labor and argues that the nature of female labor has shifted from unpaid family worker in agrarian economy to paid work in the service and industrial sector. The unfolding of modernization process has led to this transformation and the trend has remained uninterrupted in spite of an Islamic revolution. Women have entered the labor market consistently in the aftermath of the revolution and the war in the 1980s has exacerbated this process. However, the overall labor force participation of women resonates with that of the MENA region and remains low from a global perspective. Moreover, the problem of high female unemployment and especially young educated female labor force is now one of a most critical aspect of today’s society.