By Behnam Zoghi Roudsari

We live in an era where rarely a day passes by without headlines heralding breakthroughs in warfare technology. Tanks, drones, and missiles command a steadfast portion of our attention and a substantial portion of our tax dollars. Yet, amidst these conspicuous instruments of warfare, another, less visible tool of conflict remains at play, wielded by European and US politicians. Economic sanctions, largely concealed from taxpayers’ view, are deployed against millions of citizens in countries such as Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Cuba, among others. These sanctions, purportedly aimed at combating authoritarian regimes and bolstering democratic principles, wield a profound impact on the lives of countless individuals worldwide, including in Iran and its ongoing pro-democracy women’s movement.  

In 2022 and 2023, Iran witnessed six months of continuous protests against laws discriminating against women. These include legislation related to marriage and employment to inheritance and political participation. The demonstrations were extensively discussed in the media as well as political and academic forums and drew far-reaching international attention. Nevertheless, the daily lives of Iranian women and the process of gradual change after this demonstration of street politics have been largely neglected. I used to visit downtown Tehran regularly before and during the protest movement. As a researcher enthusiastic about development theory, I have always been curious to discover how social movements can contribute to solving public policy deadlocks. I used to work in an office located in a hotspot of protests in downtown Tehran but I stopped working there during the peak of the protest movement. A four-month-hiatus helped me to discern the gradual changes in post-protest-movement Tehran that remain unnoticed by every-day observers.    

What caught my eye was young women with more diverse and freely chosen outfits walking alongside their friends wearing hijab. The restrictions still remained but under the new social contract bargained among the different parts of Iranian society, you could see a festival of colours and innovations in the choice of outfits. Iranian society can be described as a mosaic composed of social forces with various positions on women’s demands and different strategies to realise their objectives. Eight years of reformist/moderate political forces in the government followed by three years of power in the hands of the conservatives and several rounds of street protests has taught Iranian society that none of these blocks can change the status quo without engaging in meaningful deliberation with other actors. The recent protest movement activated a vibrant dialogue that crossed the borders of formerly calcified identities and facilitated a new implicit bargaining under the skin of Iranian society. 

I was in Tehran to attend a computer programming class. As I expected, my classmates were mostly young women with college degrees, intending to enhance their skills to find jobs or Ph.D. positions in Europe or North America. In fact, the collapse of Iran’s economy  during the past decade has made emigration an ever more favourable option for the younger generation of Iranians. According to Iran Migration Outlook (2022), the number of Iranian students receiving US visas to pursue a Ph.D. position has increased six-and-a-half times between 2010 to 2020 (p.174). This research also reports that the number of Iranians holding Canadian student visas has increased sixteen times from 2000 to 2021 (p.187). Additionally, recent surveys show a “desire to migrate” prevalent  among more than sixty percent of most sub-sections of the Iranian population.

 “It is not fair that after fifteen years of education and work that means struggle and resistance on an everyday basis, I have to leave it all behind to start everything from square one. If only we could make a modest livelihood in our home country without the fear of war and growing inflation”. I have heard similar words of frustration from young women who have bravely demonstrated inspiring instances of resistance against gender discrimination for months, the same generation who stood their ground to convince their government to cooperate with Western power brokers to reduce international tensions. In return, Donald Trump’s administration and its allies breached their promises, doubling down on economic pressures and threatening Iranian society with war and more sanctions. After more than a decade of relentless pressures on Iranian society, statistics on migration could forecast a refugee crisis. This must concern political leaders in Europe, the potential destination for the majority of Iranians in the coming years disappointed with their country’s economic outlook and searching for a refuge in developed countries.

In harmony with the encroaching resistance of Iranian women in the choices they make in their everyday lives, the younger cohort of my classmates demonstrated their protest in their choice of clothes. However, the female teacher carefully followed the institute’s formal dress code as she could lose her job for breaching the laws regarding the outfit.  Her prudence did not surprise anyone as the ongoing economic crisis has made the bargaining power of the labour force much weaker, especially for women, leaving no space for dissent. The index of female labour force participation can provide a rough description of the depth of this crisis. Female labour force participation in Iran is measured at sixteen percent in 2022, a catastrophic figure even compared to the most conservative Muslim governments in the region. This figure stands at an average of nineteen percent in the Middle East and North Africa. Iranian female labor participation consistently increased during the 1990s and early 2000s, reaching its record high of twenty percent in 2005. But a combination of the rise of conservatives to the administration, economic sanctions and international pressures, and the Covid-19 shock has widened the gender gap in the Iranian labour market. 

“With a computer science degree and several certificates, I cannot even expect a minimum wage job where the employer respects my basic rights as he can easily dismiss me for any objection to pick a more compliant employee from the large pool of over-qualified unemployed women. I had an ongoing struggle with my traditional-minded father, an ongoing political movement to pursue my basic rights as a woman, and now this is us against the entire world to make a minimum living”. Economic sanctions and international pressures to isolate Iran, depriving Iranian women access to international job markets, has intensified their marginalisation under the constraints of tradition and political disenfranchisement. The deteriorating economic outlook has made the ideal of becoming independent women implausible for the vast majority of Iranians. 

As the protests grew in size, the Iranian women’s movement sought support for their cause from Western democracies. However, more economic pressures and sanctions were the only response from the US and European leaders. In fact, since 2018, Iranian society has been suffering under the most inhumane economic sanctions designed by Donald Trump and still enforced by the Biden administration and European allies. Failing to realize its expressed purpose to change the Iranian government’s behaviour and contain its nuclear program, the burden of sanctions was directly transferred to Iranian society more broadly. These economic pressures disproportionately affect the most vulnerable communities and even undermine the access of Iranian society to food and medicine. As Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, a world-renowned Iranian economist, has documented in his recent article on impacts of sanctions on the welfare of Iranians, from the inception of the new rounds of US sanctions on Iran in 2010 to 2020, average per capita consumption has fallen by 20.4 percent. He also notes that the poverty rate nearly doubled, from the lowest point of 6.4 percent in 2012 to 12.1 in 2019. He emphasises that households in rural areas and the ones headed by women are the worst hit. In fact, a family headed by a woman is thirty-eight percent more exposed to the risk of becoming poor in 2019. Without any tangible outcomes for the intended goals and despite the critical humanitarian dimensions of the sanctions, there is no sign of a change in Iran policy among Western decision-makers.  

Living under the shadow of political suppression and a faltering economy, many Iranian civil society leaders have remained conservative regarding the protests, as they fear the fate of the Arab Spring revolutions across the Middle East, leading to brutal coups, civil wars, and state failures. In contrast to opposition forces outside Iran, they do not call for more severe sanctions as they believe inflicting additional suffering to vulnerable parts of society is unethical. They also hold sanctions to be counterproductive for peaceful changes and civil protests as economic pressures drain Iranian civil society of its vital forces. The US “Maximum Pressure” campaign against Iran has left the Iranian middle class marginalized from the social and political arena. During this period, many middle class civil organizations like student unions and teachers syndicates, formerly acting as the main driving forces of social and political developments in Iran, became overshadowed by more disorganised masses with potential for violence outbreaks as is evident in change of political discourse of protests during the past decade. 

Here lies a critical space for reconsideration among civil society actors and Western policy-makers about Iran: Should they make the decision to adhere to one of the most heinous legacies of Donald Trump to put Iranian society under inhumane pressures to the point of intolerable suffering, inflicting an uprising that risks prolonged genocidal civil war, millions of displaced and another refugee crisis? Alternatively, they could help lift the constraints that impede true economic and political empowerment of women in Iran to enhance their bargaining power and voice their dissent through gradualist and reformist channels of social change. Iranian women have struggled during the past decade to push back the limits imposed by tradition and patriarchy to receive education and enter the labor markets. Currently, around two million women are studying in Iranian academic institutions, and more than twenty-seven percent of Iranian women hold an academic degree, impressive figures even compared to the most developed countries. Under the ruins of a deteriorating economy, however, they have been deprived of the job opportunities they aspired to. The young women in my computer programming class, all with a college degree, strive to find a job with a modest salary of around $200 per month, probably less than one-twentieth of the average salary for their cohort in international job markets. Lifting the sanctions and other restrictions on Iranian society would help Iranian women to play their productive roles in the international markets and to protect their society from a full-blown crisis like in neighboring Afghanistan, Syria, and Lebanon. The current state of affairs, however, inflicts extra suffering on a society already under devastating pressures of tradition, patriarchy, and conservative government. It is now a critical moment for those across the world concerned with democracy in Iran and the liberation of Iranian women to choose between these diverging paths.