Introduction
Globally, women’s economic and social autonomy remains shaped by a complex interplay of legal, cultural, and economic forces (Iversen & Rosenbluth, 2010). Codified laws and informal social norms often limit women’s access to employment, financial resources, and public life, while broader economic shocks, such as international sanctions, can amplify these restrictions (Abdi, 2025; Ostadalidehaghi & Béland, 2013; Toprak, 2021; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2025). Iran is an exemplary case of this dynamic: women’s personal status and family laws restrict mobility, marriage, divorce, and financial independence. These constraints interact with sanctions that destabilize private-sector employment and limit opportunities for financial and economic participation. While prior research documents the effects of gendered legal restrictions and the socioeconomic consequences of sanctions, less attention has been given to their combined effects over time.
This study asks: How do Iran’s personal status and family law restrictions and international sanctions intersect to constrain Iranian women’s social autonomy and long-term economic security? Since Iran combines codified gender inequality with prolonged exposure to comprehensive sanctions, this research seeks to understand how legal and economic pressures converge to shape women’s lives. Unlike other sanctioned states, Iran’s laws formally restrict women’s rights while sanctions simultaneously undermine alternative pathways to economic independence, making it possible to study these forces in tandem.
To understand how international sanctions and restrictions on women interact, annual data from 1995–2024 are analyzed. Data on international sanctions are compiled targeting Iran’s private-sector using sanction databases, alongside systematic coding of legal texts governing women’s mobility, employment, financial access, and personal status. The intensity of sanctions, legal restrictions, and women’s workforce participation is compared to track how periods of increased economic pressure and legal enforcement coincide. This approach captures both the formal imposition of laws and sanctions, as well as their practical effects on women’s economic and social autonomy.
Findings reveal that women’s labor force participation and economic autonomy are most constrained when sanctions are high and reinforce existing legal restrictions. Temporary sanction relief yields modest improvements even without legal reform, whereas peak sanctions exacerbate preexisting constraints, increasing reliance on informal labor and limiting access to financial services and mobility. This demonstrates that economic shocks alone cannot explain women’s constrained autonomy, as international sanctions worsen outcomes by interacting with and reinforcing existing legal and cultural restrictions.
Drawing on feminist International Relations theory, this study highlights how global economic and political structures produce gendered effects that shape women’s autonomy and opportunities (Moghadam, 2024). This research contributes to scholarly literature and policy discussions by demonstrating the importance of recognizing the impact on citizens, instead of considering only the government. It provides a framework for understanding how international economic measures may inadvertently reinforce gender inequality, emphasizing the need for policymakers to account for the differential effects of sanctions on women. By linking legal restrictions, economic shocks, and women’s social autonomy over a three-decade period, this study illuminates the mechanisms of constraint and potential pathways for mitigating gendered harm under conditions of economic and political pressure.
Literature Review
Iranian women face legal constraints such as male guardianship, unequal divorce rights, and limitations on mobility, which directly restrict their participation in social, political, and economic life (Moghadam, 2024). Concurrently, international sanctions have destabilized the Iranian economy, collapsing private-sector employment, limiting access to financial opportunities, and further constraining women’s agency (Toprak, 2021; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2025). Understanding how these domestic and international factors intersect is critical for understanding the compounded barriers Iranian women face and the broader implications for gender justice.
Scholarship has explored legal frameworks and cultural norms shaping autonomy and the economic and social effects of sanctions, including the informalization of women’s labor (more women end up working in unstable, low-paid, or unofficial jobs–like street vending, domestic work, or gig work–without contracts, benefits, or legal protection), the feminization of survival strategies (how women increasingly carry the burden of keeping households alive during economic hardship, often by juggling multiple small jobs, unpaid care work, and informal income), and constraints on employment, education, and participation in public life (Abdi, 2025; Moghadam, 2024; Ostadalidehaghi & Béland, 2013; Toprak, 2021). Historical cases, such as apartheid South Africa, show sanctions often interact with domestic laws rather than acting independently (Jones, 1996; Klotz, 1996).
However, Iran’s literature often examines sanctions and laws in isolation (Moghadam, 2024; Toprak, 2021). Family law, criminal code, and passport regulations, grounded in Shia Islamic principles and enforced morality rules, formally restrict women’s autonomy. Sanctions are simultaneously leveraged domestically to justify limiting women’s rights and activism (Center for Human Rights in Iran, 2024). This combination of codified inequality and external pressures produces multidimensional barriers to social and economic autonomy, highlighting the need for integrated analysis.
Women in Iran
Iranian women’s social autonomy is constrained by legal and cultural frameworks that reinforce male authority. Laws on guardianship and family matters give men control over women’s mobility, marriage, divorce, and resources, while cultural norms and state enforcement further limit choices (Ostadalidehaghi & Béland, 2013). These barriers, amplified by sanctions and economic pressures, restrict women’s autonomy and economic security.
Meanwhile, international economic sanctions have a pronounced gendered impact on Iranian women’s economic opportunities and autonomy. Sanctions reduce private-sector opportunities, disproportionately affecting women who are often employed in precarious or informal positions (Toprak, 2021). Economic pressures limit women’s financial independence, compounded by male-approval requirements for loans. Sanctions also interact with neoliberal reforms, including privatization and market-oriented policies, which intensify structural inequalities and formalize survival strategies outside the regulated economy (Abdi, 2025). Together, these dynamics illustrate that sanctions do not affect women solely as economic actors. Instead, they compound existing legal and social constraints, deepening barriers to autonomy and empowerment.
Interviews with Iranian women activists demonstrate that international sanctions and economic restructuring, including neoliberal reforms, have constrained their capacity to organize and advocate for change. Activists report that the government uses sanctions and interactions with Western states as pretexts to restrict civil society, portraying domestic women’s organizations as politically suspect (Iversen & Rosenbluth, 2010; Povey, 2016). Sanctions have intensified poverty and state repression, making it harder for women’s groups to operate and limiting opportunities to speak publicly about social and political issues. Concurrently, neoliberal policies and privatization have strengthened state control over society, shrinking the space available for activism. Sanctions have also empowered conservative factions and complicated transnational collaborations with Western feminist movements. These findings demonstrate that economic measures, in combination with domestic policies, restrict not only resources but also women’s ability to advocate for themselves and challenge entrenched social norms.
With this in mind, sanctions in Iran become not only economic tools, but also political and social tools that influence how women’s behavior and activism are interpreted (Moghadam, 2024; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2025). Domestic political narratives frame sanctions as foreign interference, which authorities use to justify restrictions on mobility, civil society participation, and collaboration with transnational feminist networks (Moghadam, 2024; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2025). These narratives amplify preexisting patriarchal laws and cultural expectations, reinforcing gendered constraints on everyday decision-making and long-term empowerment. Sanctions exacerbate economic vulnerability by limiting access to employment and financial independence (Lynch, 2020). The combined effects of legal restrictions, cultural norms, and international sanctions create multidimensional barriers that constrain women’s social autonomy, limit their voice in public life, and hinder their pursuit of economic security.
While existing research explores the legal, economic, and social constraints faced by Iranian women under domestic policies and international sanctions (Abdi, 2025; Moghadam, 2024; Toprak, 2021), several gaps remain. First, much of the literature treats sanctions, legal restrictions, and cultural norms separately, without fully examining how they intersect to produce barriers to women’s autonomy and economic security. Second, studies on women’s activism often focus on strategies and resilience (Povey, 2016) but provide limited analysis of how sanctions specifically constrain women’s ability to engage in the workforce at the same level as men. Third, while economic and social outcomes are documented (Lynch, 2020; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2025), fewer studies integrate these outcomes with perceptions and enforcement of gendered policies, leaving an incomplete picture of how sanctions compound patriarchy.
This study shows how legal, cultural, and economic factors combine into a framework that explains how Iranian women’s social autonomy and economic security are constrained. By highlighting the compounded effects of sanctions and domestic policies from 1995 onward, this research addresses how international economic measures indirectly reinforce gendered inequalities, shaping both individual agency and collective organizing in ways underexplored in current scholarship.
Methods
This study employs a quantitative analysis of Iran to examine how the country’s gender-discriminatory legal framework and international economic sanctions intersect to constrain women’s social autonomy and long-term economic security. This study examines how personal status and family law restrictions and private-sector international sanctions operate together over time to shape women’s access to employment, financial resources, mobility, and public participation.
Iran’s Islamic Republic regime combines institutional stability with centralized authority, controlling key industries and limiting opportunities for legal reform. Demographics and macroeconomic fluctuations influence labor supply and household resources, allowing isolation of sanctions’ interaction with legal restrictions.
Iran has been governed as an Islamic Republic since 1979, a regime that has remained institutionally stable across the period under study. It operates as a theocratic–republican hybrid in which ultimate authority rests with the unelected Supreme Leader, who controls the military, judiciary, and key state institutions. Although the president and parliament (Majles) are formally elected, candidates must be vetted by the Guardian Council, significantly limiting political competition (VDem; Polity; Freedom House). The private-sector exists but is heavily regulated, and many strategic industries are controlled by the state or religious foundations (bonyads). These regime characteristics shape economic outcomes and suggest structural constraints on private-sector recovery regardless of leadership changes.
In particular, centralized political authority limits opportunities for legal reform, state control over key industries and religious foundations structures labor market access, and demographic shifts and economic instability influence labor supply, household resources, and women’s economic participation, allowing the study to isolate how sanctions interact with legal restrictions within these broader conditions. Data from 1995–2024 are analyzed, beginning with the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women, which established the most comprehensive international framework and measurable commitments for advancing global gender equality, providing a relevant international benchmark for assessing gender equality progress. Analyzing this time period allows the analysis to cover a period of rapid change in Iran’s laws targeting women, showing how the state has increasingly imposed stricter restrictions on women’s freedoms and personal autonomy over time. I use data on all international sanctions targeting Iran’s private-sector from 1995–2004, which includes sanctions imposed by the U.S., EU, and UN. Sanctions data is compiled from official legal texts such as executive orders, congressional statutes, and UN Security Council resolutions, as well as sanctions databases and secondary academic literature on sanctions typologies. Then, legal and policy texts are used to track women’s rights and restrictions in Iran, including the Civil Code, Islamic Penal Code, Passport Law, and more recent legislation related to hijab enforcement and family law. This includes both longstanding laws and post-1995 reforms or shifts in enforcement, capturing legal frameworks that constrain women’s legal status. Together, these sources provide a foundation for understanding how legal and economic constraints interact to shape Iranian women’s social autonomy and economic security.
International Sanctions
For this study, international sanctions are defined as economic measures that primarily target the private-sector, restricting or disabling the ability of firms, workers, and financial institutions to engage in lawful economic activity, either through direct legal restrictions or through the compliance strategies that private actors adopt in response to external pressure. These sanctions are coercive tools that limit trade, financial transactions, and investment flows, disrupting the broader economic environment in which private firms, banks, and workers operate (Giumelli & Onderco, 2021). While sanctions are formally imposed on states or political elites, much of their practical impact is mediated through private actors: firms, banks, and intermediaries that must comply with and implement restrictive measures, often by cutting business ties or withdrawing from sanctioned markets (Giumelli & Onderco, 2021). In the implementation phase, private companies frequently engage in de-risking behaviors, such as reducing exposure to sanctioned regions to avoid compliance risk, which amplifies economic disruption by limiting access to international markets and finance beyond the formal targets of sanctions (Giumelli & Onderco, 2021).
To measure exposure to international sanctions, data were systematically collected from official legal instruments and public records maintained by the U.S. Treasury (Executive Orders and related statutes), the European Union (Council on Regulations and Decisions), and the United Nations (Security Council Resolutions). These sources provide detailed records of sanctions programs, including the sectors, entities, and types of economic activity targeted, as well as the dates of imposition, modification, or removal. By compiling these sources, A dataset was constructed to capture the presence and timing of sanctions affecting Iran’s private-sector from 1995–2024. For quantitative analysis, sanctions were operationalized using a binary coding system. Sanctions were coded annually (1=active, 0=inactive). Peak sanctions (μ≈8.5–8.7) coincide with workforce participation dropping to 13–16%, showing a clear negative correlation between sanctions intensity and women’s economic activity. By translating legal and policy texts into this measurable structure, the data captures the practical exposure of the private-sector to international sanctions, enabling analysis of how these economic constraints intersect with domestic legal restrictions to shape women’s social and economic autonomy.
Legal Frameworks
Legal framework data were subsequently compiled within Iran that affect women’s autonomy by systematically reviewing official legal texts, including the Civil Code, Islamic Penal Code, Passport Law, and family law provisions, as well as amendments and enforcement guidance issued after 1995. Longstanding family and civil laws governing marriage, divorce, custody, residence, and financial rights are treated as structural constraints that predate sanctions but remain actively enforced. Recent legal developments, such as the 2012 Islamic Penal Code reform, amendments to the Passport Law, and post-2022 hijab enforcement measures, are analyzed for how they intensified surveillance, restricted mobility, and increased the legal risks associated with women’s public presence and activism. Data capture involved coding the presence or absence of restrictions in each year: legal provisions that limited mobility, employment, or financial rights were coded as 1, while periods or domains with no formal restrictions were coded as 0. Close reading of legal texts, judicial guidance, and human rights reports allowed for assessment of both formal rules and shifts in enforcement practices, recognizing that application changes can be as consequential as legislative change. Graphs were created and the data were systematically tracked to identify periods of intensified morality policing, expanded surveillance, and post-protest crackdowns alongside concurrent economic shocks, providing a dynamic view of how legal and economic constraints interacted over time.
Women’s Economic Power and Autonomy
The primary outcome of interest is women’s access to formal employment, financial services, mobility necessary for work, and the ability to organize or advocate for economic rights. These outcomes are measured through women’s workforce participation and economic autonomy (Abdi, 2025; Moghadam, 2024; Povey, 2016; Toprak, 2021; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2025). For this paper, autonomy is defined as women’s personal status in social environments. These include women’s status in their family, workforce, and the economy. Women’s workforce data from the World Bank are used to contextualize gender disparities in employment, while existing scholarship demonstrates that these outcomes are shaped by sanctions-induced contraction of the private-sector and by legal constraints on women’s economic activity, including restrictions on employment, mobility, and financial access (Moghadam, 2024; Povey, 2016; Toprak, 2021; United Nations Human Rights Council, 2025). A thematic analysis was conducted using process tracing and synthesis of legal, economic, and social data to identify recurring mechanisms through which sanctions and domestic laws intersect to constrain women’s autonomy. The key themes include contraction of private-sector employment, increased reliance on informal and precarious labor, gender-differentiated access to financial services, restrictions on mobility necessary for work, and the use of sanctions narratives to justify enforcement of gendered legal controls. These themes were implemented through annual coding of legal and sanctions data, as well as the creation of graphs tracking periods of intensified morality policing, surveillance, and post-protest crackdowns, allowing the analysis to capture how legal and economic constraints interact over time.
Results
From 1995 to 2004, international sanctions targeting Iran’s private sector were relatively low, with an average intensity of μ ≈ 2. During this period, women’s workforce participation increased steadily, rising from around 10% to 19%. Between 2005 and 2009, sanctions intensified to a moderate level (μ ≈ 4.8), corresponding with a slight decline in participation. Peak sanctions occurred from 2010 to 2015 (μ ≈ 8.67), during which women’s workforce participation dropped sharply to 13–16%, highlighting the strong negative relationship between sanctions intensity and employment opportunities. Partial relief in 2016–2017 (μ ≈ 6) allowed participation to stabilize modestly, but by 2018–2024, sanctions returned to high levels (μ ≈ 8.5), keeping workforce participation low at 13–14%. These trends show that higher sanctions intensity, as quantified by the μ coding, directly corresponds to reduced workforce participation, illustrating the economic barriers imposed on women.
Legal restrictions affecting women’s autonomy, coded on a scale from 0 to 10.33, steadily increased over the study period. From 1995 to 2004, legal restrictions were moderate (7–8), allowing workforce participation to rise. Between 2000 and 2011, gradual increases in legal restrictions slowed participation growth. In 2012–2013, legal intensification coincided with stagnation or slight decline in workforce participation. A notable jump in restrictions in 2014 continued this downward trend. By 2020–2021, further legal tightening produced sharper declines in participation, and the legal index peaked at approximately 10.33 during 2022–2024, with workforce participation remaining historically low. These coded values clearly map to outcomes: higher legal restriction scores correspond to measurable reductions in women’s employment and economic autonomy, demonstrating the impact of formal legal barriers.
When sanctions and legal restrictions are considered together, their compounded impact on women’s workforce participation becomes clear. During 1995–2004, low sanctions (μ ≈ 2) combined with moderate legal restrictions (7–8) supported workforce participation growth from roughly 10% to 19%. From 2005 to 2009, moderate sanctions (μ ≈ 4.8) alongside stable legal restrictions (≈8) produced a slight decline. Peak sanctions from 2010 to 2015 (μ ≈ 8.67) combined with high legal restrictions (≈8.33) corresponded with workforce participation falling to 13–16%. Partial relief in 2016–2017 (μ ≈ 6) with slightly higher legal restrictions (≈9) allowed modest recovery. During 2018–2024, renewed high sanctions (μ ≈ 8.5–9) alongside peak legal restrictions (≈9–10.33) maintained workforce participation at 13–14%. These trends demonstrate a quantitative connection: higher numerical coding of sanctions and legal restrictions jointly correspond with the lowest workforce participation, showing that economic and legal pressures interact to produce compounded barriers to women’s social and economic autonomy.
Conclusion
This study examined how Iran’s personal status and family law restrictions, including male guardianship, mobility constraints, and unequal divorce rights, interact with international sanctions targeting the private-sector to shape women’s social autonomy and economic security, showing that sanctions worsen existing legal barriers and deepen negative outcomes for women more broadly. The analysis shows that women’s autonomy is most limited when high-intensity sanctions coincide with strict legal enforcement. Periods of peak sanctions and legal intensification correspond with reduced workforce participation, increased reliance on informal and precarious labor, and limited access to financial services. Temporary relief from sanctions, even without legal reforms, produces modest improvements in employment opportunities, highlighting the crucial role of economic conditions in mediating the effects of structural legal inequality. When the economy expands, women can access jobs and resources that are otherwise restricted by both market contraction and legal barriers. These patterns demonstrate that sanctions amplify preexisting legal and cultural constraints rather than acting independently, creating multidimensional barriers to women’s empowerment.
These findings are largely consistent with prior research on the gendered impacts of economic sanctions (Moghadam, 2024; Toprak, 2021) but extend the literature by explicitly linking sanctions to codified legal inequality and examining their combined effects over nearly three decades. This integration clarifies why women’s social and economic constraints cannot be fully understood without considering the intersection of domestic laws, cultural norms, and international economic pressures. Despite women being viewed as the civilian population that should be most protected, women are often the most affected population (Drury & Peksen, 2014).
The study contributes to both academic and policy debates by offering a framework for analyzing how legal and economic constraints jointly shape gendered outcomes. It underscores the need for longitudinal analyses and gender-sensitive policy considerations in sanctions design. The Iranian case remains important for contemporary international relations, as the United States, the European Union, Israel, and other actors continue to impose sanctions in response to human-rights violations, including abuses against women (Associated Press, 2026; Reuters, 2026). However, based on the findings of this research, sanctions intended to pressure the Iranian government may inadvertently reinforce barriers to women’s economic and social autonomy.
Several limitations should be noted. While the dataset captures long-term trends, it relies on aggregate measures of sanctions and legal restrictions, which may obscure regional, sectoral, and household-level variations. Legal coding captures formal restrictions but cannot fully account for informal enforcement or cultural practices that further constrain autonomy. Future research should address these gaps by combining qualitative interviews, localized case studies, or household-level analyses to better understand how women navigate multidimensional constraints and adapt their strategies for economic survival and social participation. Such work could investigate how these strategies vary across regions, social classes, and levels of legal or economic restriction, revealing the mechanisms through which sanctions and legal barriers interact to shape women’s autonomy.
Conflict of Interest
The author declares there is no known conflict of interest.