The e-Commerce Development Center of Iran, affiliated to the Ministry of Industries, has released a report pointing to the gender divide in the growing online businesses sector, calling on those responsible to address the issue.
According to a report published on ecommerce.gov.ir, only 9% of managers of Iranian e-commerce firms and 35.5% of their employees are women.
The report points out that only 23% of mobile app developers working with major Iranian Android market Cafe Bazaar are women. The center calls for the gender divide to be addressed, pointing out that there is much room for improvement.
Statistics from the ICT Ministry show that 45% of mobile phone users and 48% of Internet users are women.
In August and during a conference on Women’s Empowerment Through ICT, Vice President for Women and Family Affairs Massoumeh Ebtekar said joint efforts by the government and people can help bridge the digital gender gap and move the nation closer towards gender justice.
> Centralized Business
The report from the e-Commerce Development Center further said 79% of managers of Internet-based businesses are aged between 20 and 40 years.
Online businesses in the report are classified based on which province they operate: 46% in Tehran, 8% in Khorasan Razavi, 8% Isfahan, 5% Fars, 4% East Azarbaijan, 3% Alborz and 3% Mazandaran.
The disproportionate distribution of the electronic businesses is also manifest in all sub-sectors of e-commerce. For instance, according to an earlier report released by Cafe Bazaar, Tehran Province with 10,211 mobile app developers has the largest share in the industry in terms of payroll with 32.9%. It is followed by Khorasan Razavi 8%, Fars 1,8 (6%), Khuzestan 5.1%, West Azerbaijan 4.8%, Isfahan 4.8%, and Alborz 4.1%.
Provinces are also ranked based on their share of online financial transactions. Tehran again leads the way with 74% of online transactions, followed by Khorasan Razavi with 3%, Fars 3% and Isfahan 2%.
According to the report, during the past fiscal that ended in March 356,000 online transactions worth 891trillion rials ($7.3 billion) were made in Tehran alone.
A little over 30% of the online firms are subsidiaries of other entities and operate from the offices of parent companies. Nearly 25% are independent and have their own offices. 44% do not have an office as their personnel work from home.
Furthermore, 85% of the companies have less than 10 employees and only 6% of e-commerce firms have more than 30 staff.
The report says 20% of the firms offer services like transportation, computer programming, marketing, fintech and accounting while 80% are online shops.
According to data released by Shaparak, the payment settlement network and by the Central Bank of Iran, by the end of the last fiscal which ended in March, 694,000 online firms were registered from which 138,000 were active. By the end of 2016, 25.7% of Iranians had at least once tried using an online service.
> ICT Infrastructure
Over the years ICT infrastructure and application of mobile phones, which are bedrocks of e-commerce, have improved and expanded significantly.
Iran's population is 80 million with 70% now living in urban areas. The country reportedly has 56.7 million Internet users and Internet penetration is said to be 69%.
The total number of active mobile Internet users is 51.7 million. An estimated 125 million SIM cards have been sold of which 83 million are active. Some 73% of the subscribers use pre-paid services and 27% post-paid. Over 50% of the mobile SIMs support broadband Internet (3G and/or 4G).
World Bank data show that by the end of 2017, the number of secure Internet servers (per 1 million people) in the world stood at 3,511, while the number is significantly lower in Iran at 224. In the MENA region, the number is around 309. Access to secure servers is seen as a cornerstone of e-commerce.
