Better for whom? Sanction type and the gendered consequences for women
| Author | Kate Perry |
| DOI | 10.1177/00471178211018843 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00471178211018843
International Relations
2022, Vol. 36(2) 151 –175
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/00471178211018843
journals.sagepub.com/home/ire
Better for whom? Sanction
type and the gendered
consequences for women
Kate Perry
Georgia Southern University
Abstract
How does sanction type negatively impact women in gendered ways in the target state? I argue
that economic sanctions place a financial burden on the target state which leads to government
cuts to social spending, specifically in public education. Women rely disproportionately upon
spending on public education, and thus, are impacted more harshly than men when these
programs are underfunded by the government. I find that contrary to policy expectations,
targeted sanctions do not have a reduced impact on women’s human rights in the target
state compared to comprehensive sanctions once this impact is disaggregated from standard
human rights indices and specific mechanisms in the state are examined. In fact, compared to
comprehensive sanctions, I find that targeted and human rights sanction types are worse for
women’s gender equality metrics via this influence on government social spending. Using a panel
analysis, I show that targeted and human rights sanctions lead to a decrease in government
spending on public education and that these cuts negatively impact women in the post-sanctions
period. However, I illustrate that when the target state increases spending on primary education
in the post-sanctions period, the overall negative impact of sanctions on women can be mitigated.
Keywords
education, foreign policy, gender, sanctions
Introduction
Economic sanctions are an attractive tool in statecraft, particularly when one considers
the violent alternatives. Applying economic sanctions sends a signal of resolve to the
target state without the use of direct military action, which can cause tremendous col-
lateral damage. However, sanctions themselves can have tremendous unintended
Corresponding author:
Kate Perry, Department of Political Science & International Studies, Georgia Southern University, 2205
Carroll Building, Statesboro, GA 30460, USA.
Email: kperry@georgiasouthern.edu
1018843IRE0010.1177/00471178211018843International RelationsPerry
research-article2021
Article
152 International Relations 36(2)
consequences. The comprehensive sanctions regime imposed on Iraq in the 1990s, for
example, inflicted widespread suffering on the citizens of Iraq, including crippling levels
of unemployment, poverty, and starvation. During the first five years of the sanction
regime, ‘the price for a family’s food supply for a month increased 250-fold’.1 The
humanitarian consequences of the sanctions on Iraq were so severe, the international
outcry forced the United Nations Security Council to revise their decision-making pro-
cess related to sanctions imposition.2 While some have argued that the impact of the
sanctions in Iraq was uniquely severe, all states targeted by sanctions incur some level of
unintended negative consequences on their populace.3
While nations design economic sanctions to create financial strain on the target state
and coerce state leaders to alter their behavior, already-vulnerable populations, espe-
cially women and children, fare the worst under sanctions.4 For poor, rural mothers and
their children, the sanctions in Iraq had particularly devastating consequences as child
mortality rates rose considerably, violence against women increased, and female employ-
ment rates fell from 23% to 10% in only 5 years.5 Sanctions can therefore present a major
set-back for the cause of gender equality in developing countries, which are most likely
to experience sanctions. However, research on economic sanctions has not identified the
mechanisms by which sanctions burden women. Furthermore, academic work in this
area in recent years has suggested that two particular sanction types, human rights sanc-
tions and targeted sanctions, are not only more effective in achieving the goals of the
sender state but are also more humane. Evidence indicates that human rights sanctions
and targeted sanctions produce consequences for civilians in the target state that are con-
siderably less negative than those following the use of comprehensive sanctions, yet this
is not proving to be true for the rights of those targeted.6
In this article, I examine the impact of human rights sanctions and targeted sanctions
on social spending, which correlates strongly with women’s health and welfare indica-
tors, used to assess gender equality. I aim to unwrap the specific mechanisms by which
these seemingly preferential foreign policy tools negatively impact women in the target
state. Using a time-series, panel regression analysis of 150 countries from 1990 to 2014,
I show that despite their supposed ‘lesser of two evils’ reputation, human rights and tar-
geted sanctions severely restrict women’s rights in the target state via significant loss of
government spending on education.7 However, while post-sanction cuts in government
education spending negatively affect women by significantly decreasing parity of liter-
acy between men and women and decreasing women’s participation in the labor force,
an increase in government education spending during the sanctions period can amelio-
rate much of the burden these ‘smart’ sanctions inflict on women. Unfortunately, target
governments are highly unlikely to take such important steps to protect women, illustrat-
ing that even smart sanctions, despite their reputation as less corrosive of human rights,
do not provide sufficient measures to address civilian needs.
Negative impacts of economic sanctions
Though states do not intentionally set out to hurt innocent civilians when implementing
economic sanctions, such consequences occur frequently. Sender states impose sanctions
for various reasons including compellence, deterrence, or even to satisfy interest groups
To continue reading
Request your trial