Economic growth in Iran from the gender perspective

Feminist economics which emerged during women's movement in the nineteenth century has developed the concept of gender relations in the various aspects of social and economic life. It challenges the male-dominated economic methods and questions why women have been ignored in economic activities and seeks to improve the economic situation of women. In traditional economy, domestic work which is the cheapest and most difficult phase of production has been considered as a woman task. However, women have the largest share of world unpaid jobs, but their participation of the world's total workforce is more than past years. Some economic analysts like Kenny Dawn argue that if women were hired in jobs with pay, the world's economic situation was much better than the current one. In this thesis we will try to introduce the feminist economics which is a new subject to the literature, gives a new perspective on economic life, make contributions to the feminist movement and examine female prespective on economic approaches. A review of studies up today, mostly reveal that the status of women in the economy has been ignored. Also, in this study, it was aimed to investigate the woman's perspective on the economics. For this purpose, in the first chapter after the concept of feminism is explained, the emergence process of feminism is set forth. Different types of feminist economics theories has formed the second part of study. The last part of the study describes the contribution of feminist economics in the economic and social life and feminist economics point of view regarding the concept of women in the economy has been explained with reference to the views of feminist economists. Actually by means of gender inequality factor, we analyzed the economic growth in Iran. We investigate whether gendered outcomes in labor markets and education have macroeconomic effects and, in particular, whether gender inequality affects the rate of economic growth. Based on the results obtained in this study, it can be argued that reducing gender inequality increases the rate of economic growth. Decreasing gender inequality in employment and education increases the rate of economic growth, in other words, empowering women and increasing the participation of them in economic activities will lead to a high growth rate of economy. Keywords: Economics, Feminism, Feminist Economics, Gender inequality, Growth