The Uphill Battle for Iranian Women in the Labour Market

Economic sanctions are one of the political tools that one country or group of countries, applies in other countries for putting them under pressure because of a variety of political and social issues. Most of the studies tried to measure the impact of sanctions on different economic sectors or on the wellbeing of the society (e.g. Neuenkirch and Fneumeier, 2014; Peksen, 2011). There are very few of them investigating the gender impact of the sanctions (e.g. Drury and Peksen, 2012). Previous studies on the impact of economic sanctions show that the overall impacts of economic sanctions are negative. The aim of this paper is to investigate the effect of economic sanctions on women’s economic rights in Iran. The study will cover the years from 1990 to 2013. To investigate the effect of economic sanctions on women’s economic rights; female labor participation rate; as an index measurement of women’s economic rights, regressed on economic sanctions (size), GDP per capita, and economic cost of sanctions. Results indicate that economic sanction has negative impact on women’s economic rights.