An empirical assessment of the political and gendered consequences of economic sanctions

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This project investigates the unintended political and gender-specific effects of economic sanctions in target countries. Drawing insight from the existing literature on the consequences of economic coercion, I argue that economic sanctions will likely increase the repressiveness of the target government. The essence of the argument is that sanctions inadvertently contribute to the repressiveness of the target regime by enhancing the coercive capacity of target regimes and providing their leaders with more incentives to employ repression. I also show that economic coercion will likely worsen women's well-being in target countries. In establishing the theoretical link between sanctions and women's status, I suggest that economic sanctions deteriorate women's well-being by disrupting economic infrastructure, restricting the level of economic globalization, and escalating gendered violence in sanctioned countries. Using cross-national, time-series empirical data, the findings confirm that the presence and continued use of economic sanctions will inadvertently increase the level of political repression and deteriorate women's status in target countries.