The Violence of Sanctions: A Gendered Political Economy Approach

Although they helped weaken the South African apartheid regime, sanctions since then have become controversial, because of their effects on the economy and society and because they are imposed by powerful states against less-powerful ones (e.g., US sanctions against Cuba since the 1960s). Studies also document the harsh effects of the 1990s UN and US sanctions on Iraq. A large body of research has come to examine sanctions –their history, place in international law, and the power relations, effects on democracy, and broad social effects. Gendered effects, however, are under-researched. Since the 1980s and especially since 2010, Iran has experienced US sanctions, and the related literature continues to grow. In 2020, the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies published papers under its “Iran Under Sanctions” theme. Through a focus on the sanctions armory against Iran, I make two claims. First, I show how sanctions constitute a form of violence –specifically, state violence– directed at a country’s economy, polity, and civil society, and as such should be included in what Cockburn termed “the continuum of violence.” Second, I argue that a sanctions regime prevents gender equality or reverses the empowerment of women and girls through both direct and indirect mechanisms: (a) directly, by restricting trade, imports and exports that constrain the state’s revenues and compel austerities and job losses, with implications for schooling, health, and employment opportunities for women and girls; and (b) indirectly, by strengthening hardliner and patriarchal state elements that respond to external threats and impositions by clamping down on civil society activists and campaigns for gender equality. Women and girls in Iran are victims of two forms of state violence: the violence of US sanctions, and the violence of their repressive state. My paper on sanctions thus elucidates the interactions of violence, political economy and gender.