Roksana Bahramitash, Atena Sadegh, Negin Sattari Low-Income Islamist Women and Social Economy in Iran

Annotation

In a country with over 70 million people with different political, religious and social perspectives, facing many challenges such as internal economic problems and international sanctions, Iran remains a fascinating country in the way it continues to struggle with poverty and income disparity. The main purpose of this book is to shed light on ways in which low-income religious women are an important backbone of social safety net of the country. This topic remains under-researched in Iran and the issue overlooked. The invisible role of low income women in the battle against poverty and what might one call informal welfare state has been mainly is not exclusively overlooked and from this perspective this book's contributions may be unique specially within the context of the topic of solidarity economy. The objectives of the research in this book are four-fold: (1) to highlight the perceptual differences among women of low income households in this case those who are Islamic/Islamist and with regards to socio-economic rights; (2) to develop a better understanding of what the major concerns of low income religious women are, particularly given that this group is often quite supportive of the Iranian government; (3) to gain a better understanding of the contributions low income religious women make to maintaining the social safety net in Iran; (4) to contextualize their role within the social/solidarity economy. The data was gathered in 2011 and we are about to update some of it with my recent trip to Iran, revisiting some of those previously interviewed in the original research which was based on more than 60 in depth interviews, focus group discussion as well as participant observations in four cities of Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz and Zahedan. By exploring these objectives, this book hopes to not document informal social safety net dominated entirely by women but also to close some of the perceptual gaps that may exists between them and the outsiders (those who live outside of Iran and are unfamiliar with the currents of event). This book hopes to capture the essence of the solidarity economy among low-income women, particularly religious women, in Iran in an attempt to provide policy maker to enhance and support it. For example, there are documentations of how grass root organizations operating in low income neighborhoods effectively transfer aid to those in need specially in this case those who became victim of reduction of the welfare state. Interestingly, ways in which low income religious women are engaged in social safety nets creates a unique space that brings together women from different socio-economic backgrounds in their effort to deal with poverty and in parallel with formal/state owned or male dominated informal ones such as the mosques.