Studying Sanctions Through a Feminist Lens

Lisa Neal on understanding sanctions as a form of structural violence.

Debates about sanctions tend to follow a familiar script. Who is being targeted? Will the measures change behavior? What are the economic costs to the sender country? These are legitimate questions. But they have a common blind spot: they describe sanctions from the outside, in the language of strategy and pressure, and rarely address what life is like for the ordinary people who live under them.

This episode examines how scholars are working to put people at the center of sanctions research by studying economic coercion as a form of structural violence, often incorporating a feminist lens. Scholars are addressing persistent gaps in how sanctions policies are debated by changing the focus of sanctions research, by seeking new sources of information and insight, and by pushing back on false or simplified narratives in an ongoing information war.

Lisa Neal is a researcher and journalist. Based at the University of Hamburg, Lisa has a background in feminist security studies and conflict research, and is currently completing her PhD on the intersectional effects of sanctions in Iran.

The Sanctions Age is hosted by Esfandyar Batmanghelidj and Josefine Petrick.

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