TEHRAN – A one-day scientific conference on life challenges of housewives was held in the eastern city of Birjand on Sunday.

The congress aimed at paving the way for experts to speak about depression and learning how to deal with its related problems and situations.

No one can help a woman but herself, Mehr quoted Bibi Aghdas Asghari, a psychologist and one of the lecturers of the conference.

Currently about 15 million of Iranian women are housewives and it is estimated that a housewife helps save her family’s income by about 15-20 million rials ($375-$500) per month [by doing household chores].

Women entered the economy and market after the World War II and it changed the societies’ expectation from females, she explained.

The housewives suffer the most pains and receive the least rewards, Asghari stressed.

In the developing countries, the changes in the attitude toward women were created along with the development of mass media, whereas, expectations from women did not changed, she clarified, adding, today housewives suffer emotional loneliness, because a housewife finds her happiness in other’s happiness.

“Social loneliness is another kind of loneliness housewives are facing and they also are economically dependent,” she explained. “Although housewives are helping the family financially, they have no privacy,” she said, concluding “Sometimes, housewives do not think they deserve to have privacy and it undermines their self-confidence.”

NM/MQ/MG