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Iranian police have issued a directive that only saleswomen be employed in women's clothes shops across the Islamic republic, a newspaper reported on Saturday.The move comes ahead of international women's day on Sunday.The Vatan eh-Emrouz newspaper said the order had been issued by the police chief of Tehran."According to the order, all employees in women's clothing stores must be women... but the cashier can be a man," Colonel Mehdi Ahmadi, the spokesman for Tehran police, was quoted as saying.He said the order was to be implemented countrywide and that the police would monitor such shops for compliance."First-time violators will be warned, but if they do so again they will be closed," Ahmadi said.

The order comes after Iranian media reports that some owners of women's clothing stores installed hidden cameras to secretly film customers trying on garments in changing cubicles.

It is also the latest in a series of measures taken by authorities in recent years to separate women and men in public.

Several "women only" parks have been set up in Tehran and other cities, and "women only" taxis have plied their trade on the capital's roads for the past two years.