Women realtors may lose jobs in Iran

"If I would no longer be allowed to work as a realtor, I'm going to go to the Realtors Association and sit in their offices until they give me some kind of job with a similar salary," Rezvaneh tells Al-Monitor.

“Women should not work as realtors and should not be seeing loitering in real estate agencies,” Hesam Oghabai said in December 2013. The announcement by the chairman of the Realtors Syndicate of Tehran Metropolitan Area, the largest in the country and the leading body in the field, surprised many women realtors.

This new restriction has not yet been enforced. Oghabai added that Amaken, the body responsible for enforcing religion-driven restrictions in commercial venues, had previously requested such a restriction. Some women are hopeful that the ban will not be enforced, some are confident about finding a job in another line of work but others are very anxious and fear the worst for their careers and lives.

Until 2007, being a real estate agent was considered inappropriate for women by society. But women gradually found their way into the business and proved that they could be as good or better at selling real estate than men. Women established themselves as realtors during the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad administration, despite the limitations women faced over those eight years. They changed society's mindset and the real estate agency owners' stance toward women. Politically conservative and strictly religious people continue to consider it an unsuitable job for women, or too masculine for their delicate feminine nature. Either way, talk of enforcing a ban on women working as realtors has become serious.