An Iranian prostitute in Tehran. The exact number of prostitutes working in Iran is unknown. However, prostitutes are visible on some street corners of the major cities. Many of them are runaways from poor and broken homes. The new religious government demolished the district and punished prostitution with lashing. Usually, a dowry is given to the temporary wife. Sigheh can last from 3days to 99 years although some Islamic scholars mujtahids , say that it is impossible to marry a person, as temporary marriage, for a period of time that is usually longer than the average life-time of a person ; [11] it expires automatically without divorce.
According to a number of scholars and Iranians , Sigheh is being misused as a legal cover for prostitution in Iran. It means that if a woman marries a man in this way and has sex, she has to wait for a certain period of time before marrying again and therefore, a woman cannot marry more than a limited number of times in a year.
These centers provide disease prevention tools and examine the sex workers for STDs. They also provide counselling. Among these sex workers, there are married women or female clerks, too. According to her reports, the average price of having sex with sex workers is , rials 60, tomans which is about See also: Human trafficking in Iran Iran is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking.
Some Iranian women, who seek employment to support their families in Iran, are vulnerable to sex trafficking. Iranian girls between the ages of 13 and 17 are targeted by traffickers for sale abroad; younger girls may be forced into domestic service until their traffickers consider them old enough to be subjected to child sex trafficking. In , there was a reported increase in young Iranian women in prostitution in Dubai ; some of these women may be trafficking victims.
From , the transport of girls from and through Iran en route to other Persian Gulf states for sexual exploitation reportedly increased. Iranian girls were subjected to sex trafficking in brothels in the IKR, especially Sulaimaniya ; in some cases this exploitation was facilitated by Iranian trafficking networks. In , the media reported Kurdistan Regional Government officials were among the clients of these brothels. In Tehran, Tabriz , and Astara , the number of teenage girls exploited in sex trafficking reportedly continues to increase.
