On Violence and Economy: Women, the State, and Sanctions in Iran
How do scales of violence affect economic prosperity and security, notably women’s wellbeing and security? In several recent articles that focus on Iran, I have sought to address the question by examining the harsh economic and financial sanctions on Iran, principally those imposed by the U.S., and by analyzing discriminatory domestic laws and policies enforced by Iran’s state entities. Drawing on Cynthia Cockburn’s concept of ‘the continuum of violence’, I show the cascading gendered effects – direct and indirect – of international and national applications of violence*1.
The articles draw on an array of published works that document the adverse societal effects of invasions, occupations, wars, state destabilization efforts, and sanctions. For example, the wide-ranging and often tragic gendered social effects of the 1990s U.S. and UN sanctions on Iraq have been well-documented, especially in terms of infant, child, and maternal mortality and child schooling, and I draw on those studies to contextualize the impact of sanctions on Iranian citizens. Moreover, demonstrating the perverse relationship between U.S. pressure and the reinforcement of repressive and patriarchal actions by the Iranian state’s ‘hardliner’ political faction, my work draws on, and indeed confirms, scholarship on how international pressures in the Middle East often result in domestic polarisation and adverse outcomes for women. The sanctions arsenal is broad but includes measures that make it very difficult for Iran to trade, secure loans from international banks, and invest domestically. In response, the state embarked in 2014 on what it calls its ‘resistance economy’ to strengthen the economy and continue to provide welfare to citizens. Still, the many years of economic and financial sanctions on Iran not only have failed to accomplish their goal – changing regime behaviour if not the regime itself – but have had gender dynamics which punish female citizens in specific ways. In the article on sanctions (see endnote i below), I note the following distinct effects on women: employment, education, and healthcare losses, and reinforcement of public and private patriarchy.
Scholarship also questions the extent to which women are secured by state ‘protection’ in times of peace as well as war, given the persistence of domestic violence, workplace harassment, rape, and trafficking in the rich democracies of the world-system’s core as well as in peripheral and semi-peripheral countries. In countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, where veiling and guardianship are said to ‘protect’ women and the local culture, men in fact form what Minoo Moallem has called an entitled ‘fraternal community’ that reinforced patriarchy, and they construct what Madawi Al-Rasheed called ‘a most masculine state’. Al-Rasheed is describing Saudi Arabia, but the term applies to Iran as well, where female labor force participation remains among the lowest in the region (15-18% formal sector participation, and high unemployment) and women are a very small proportion of members of parliament (3-5% over the decades, albeit with some very outspoken members).
Iran’s domestic laws leave much to be desired for women’s participation and rights. Family laws place women under the protection (or control) of male kin; inheritance of family wealth is not equal; women’s legal right to own land finally came about in 2007; and a bill to address domestic violence against women was only recently adopted by parliament, after some two decades of debate and revisions. The idea that some workplaces are not suitable or appropriate (monaseb) to women may be a disincentive for many women from more conservative, religious, or low-income households, who might fear workplace sexual harassment. For such women to feel more comfortable at the workplace, policies against workplace harassment need to be enforced. Although few countries have ratified the ILO’s convention on violence and harassment (C190), which went into force in June 2021, the Iranian authorities would send a strong positive message to its female citizens were it to join the 44 countries that currently have done so. Were it to do so, it would surely bolster the effect of a July 2016 law reducing working hours for women with special circumstances. That law reduces women’s working hours to eight hours per day – or from 44 to 36 hours per week while maintaining payment for a 44 hour-work week for women having children, those with disabilities, or who have children under six years of age or sick family members in need of care*2.
For other women, mandatory hejab – and repercussions from what is known as bad-hejab – is another disincentive. Although Iranian women and girls have been defying mandatory veiling for at least two decades, arrests can be unpredictable and arbitrary, as occurred when the young Kurdish-Iranian woman, Mahsa Jina Amini, was detained for bad-hejab and died, triggering the massive protests of Fall 2022. Enforcement of mandatory hejab is another form of violence. Arguably, it helps keep many women out of the workforce and thus denies them the capacity to contribute to economic growth and to their own empowerment.
Domestic laws can be inconsistent. For example, the Civil Code allows a girl as young as 13 to marry (in actual fact, the average age at first marriage is 23) but the age at which one can secure a loan, including a marriage loan, is 18. (Marriage loans are meant to ease the financial burden on a young couple, but also to encourage marriage.) As Iran-based lawyer and women’s rights activist Marzieh Mohebi noted, ‘how can a girl who has the legal right to marry at the age of 13 according to Article 1041 of the Civil Code, secure a marriage loan when she cannot conduct banking affairs at that age?’ Mohebi added that even if the guarantor is someone else (e.g., a parent or other relative), the guarantor can retract or halt payments, leaving the debt to the girl. This she called a form of economic violence that needs to end*3.
In these multiple ways, through imposed sanctions and through discriminatory laws, Iranian women and girls experience forms of violence that affect them in different ways. Their empowerment depends on the reform of those discriminatory laws and the end of the harsh sanctions that have affected not only the Iranian economy but also the wellbeing of women and girls.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Valentine M. Moghadam, “The Gendered Politics of Iran-U.S. Relations: Sanctions, the JCPOA, and Women’s Security.” Third World Quarterly, vol. 45 no. 7 (April 2024): 1199-1218 https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2024.2314005; Valentine M. Moghadam, “Women, Peace, and Security in the Middle East: An Agenda of Empty Promises?” Journal of Peace and War Studies, 5th ed. (October 2023): pp. 36-59, journal-peace-war-studies-5th-edition (norwich.edu); Omid Ghaderzadeh and Valentine M. Moghadam, “Scales of Violence: Iranian Kurdistan in Context” (presented at the World Congress of Sociology, RC 32 session, July 2023; currently under review); Massoud Karshenas and Valentine M. Moghadam, “What Explains Iran’s Low Female Labor Force Participation? Examining Institutions, Wages, and Sanctions” (forthcoming, Sociology of Development).
[3] See Legal Contradictions Between Marriage Loan Payments and Child Marriage - ISNA
Valentine M. Moghadam is a Professor of Sociology and International Affairs at Northeastern University, Boston (v.moghadam@northeastern.edu)