Valentine M. Moghadam’s new article “The gendered politics of Iran-U.S. relations: sanctions, the JCPOA and women’s security” was recently published in Third World Quarterly.
I examine the decades of fraught Iran–U.S. relations through a conceptual feminist IR lens, and I situate the relationship within the broader MENA region beset with rivalries, conflicts and crises. The spotlight is on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the unilateral U.S. withdrawal in 2018, the long sanctions regime imposed on Iran, and the gendered effects on women’s welfare and security. I argue that Iran–U.S. mutual hostility has enhanced tensions in the Middle East, reinforced militarised masculinities and bolstered the patriarchal political forces in Iran – which became the target of the 2022 female-led protests. Building on feminist arguments about the connection between domestic and international affairs, the article elucidates the relationship of sanctions to ‘the continuum of violence’.
Find other recent publications below:
Valentine M. Moghadam, “Women, Peace, and Security in the Middle East:
An Agenda of Empty Promises?,” Journal of Peace and War Studies 5 (October 23): 36-59.
I put the spotlight on the global Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda,
launched in October 2000 by the United Nations’ (UN) Security Council in the form of Resolution 1325, to secure women’s physical security and their participation in peacebuilding and post-reconstruction activities. Framing the discussion are theories of norm and policy diffusion and of militarized masculinities, and a review of the literature on UNSCR 1325 and its National Action Plans (NAP). Examining the NAPs that the Arab League and several MENA states have adopted, I assess strengths and weaknesses of the documents, finding them largely aspirational and symbolic. I conclude that the WPS agenda has considerable potential but is undermined by the international system’s disarray and growing militarization.
Valentine M. Moghadam, “Gender regimes, polities, and the world-system: Comparing Iran and Tunisia,” Women’s Studies International Forum 98 (May – June 2023).
This article seeks to connect gender regime theorizing and world-systems analysis. Through the comparative analysis of the evolution of gender regimes in two Global South countries, I underscore the effects of world-systemic processes – in terms of both the world-economy and the inter-state system – on national-level patriarchal relations, institutions, the nature of the public gender regime, and the direction of change. I argue that as the primary source of inequality and hierarchy at the global level, the capitalist world-system affects national-level societal dynamics and the institutional domains that constitute a gender regime. The two country cases demonstrate the salience of supra-national factors that block women’s economic agency, preventing the transition to a more egalitarian gender regime (Tunisia), and strengthening domestic patriarchal forces (Iran).
Valentine M. Moghadam, “Women and labor: key struggles in the MENA region,” ROAR, March 15, 2022.
