Empowerment or Empire? Reassessing Germany’s Feminist Foreign Policy and its consequences on Iran’s civil society

On September 16 2022, Jina/Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish woman, died in custody after being arrested for allegedly not adhering to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s hijab laws. Her death sparked a nationwide uprising under the slogan “Jin. Jiyan. Azadî”, a phrase that has its origins in the Kurdish women’s movement (Moghaddam, 2024; 136). This slogan indicates the intersectional character of the protests as well as the “inextricable link between women’s rights and human rights” (Mittelhammer et al. 2023; 6). Galvanizing people from various socioeconomic, ethnic and religious backgrounds, the protests challenged longstanding human rights violations and the systemic oppression of marginalised communities in Iran. In the same week Jina/Mahsa Amini died, Germany’s Federal Foreign Office (FFO) held its first international conference on “Shaping Feminist Foreign Policy” (FFO, 2022). In March 2023, Germany’s “Guidelines for Feminist Foreign Policy” were published, announcing that Germany would pursue the “3Rs” agenda. First introduced by Sweden in 2014, this promotes equal access to Resources, and advocates for the Rights and Representation of marginalised individuals (FFO, 2023; 11). The FFP guidelines also included a “response to the human rights violations in Iran” (ibid.; 39), amongst them the extension of economic sanctions against Iran.  

These measures have had negative repercussions on marginalised communities, whose socio-economic conditions deteriorate. In various essays, political scientist Ali Fathollah-Nejad illustrates how the Iranian regime externalises the costs of sanctions onto civil society, widening the economic power gap between civilians and the state (2014a; 88). (Semi-)national  entities such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can access state resources and illegal market routes, allowing “black-channel operations run by powerful circles of corruption and nepotism [to] flourish.” (ibid.). These entities also engage in bilateral trade with other authoritarian states such as Russia, China and North Korea (Chivvis and Keating, 2024; 12). Rather than destroying the regime’s financial capacity, economic sanctions contribute to corruption and cooperation between autocratic regimes. Nonetheless, the private sector suffers severely under the restrictions, exacerbating the economic hardship – increasing poverty and rising unemployment – experienced by civilians (Fathollah-Nejad, 2014b; 56).  

These processes disproportionately affect women, who are increasingly marginalised from the public sphere. The theocratic-patriarchal Iranian regime promotes hegemonic masculinity fostering an ideology that sees women’s role in society as domestic caretakers. Discriminatory laws and social beliefs restrict women’s financial independence, detrimentally affecting their “economic participation in the labour force, unemployment and earned income” (Toprak, 2020; 54). Poor economic conditions even reinforce social policies and attitudes that seek to preserve patriarchal hierarchies and binary, hegemonic gender roles (Fathollah-Nejad, 2014b; 57). With declining financial stability and increasing unemployment, women are pushed out of the workforce in favour of male employment (Toprak, 2020; 55). Financially struggling families deprive girls and women of access to higher education, relegating them to the domestic sphere and hindering them in becoming economically independent (Fathollah-Nejad, 2014b; 57). In recent years, there has been also a growing number of underage marriages, attributed to rising poverty (Mittelhammer et al., 2023; 9). These developments simultaneously increase incidences of domestic violence, as “men’s inability to live up to social expectations can lead to depression and attacks on women” (ICAN, 2012; 5). Thus, vulnerable communities are “subjected to collective punishment” (Fathollah-Nehad, 2014a; 87), as sanctions lead to deteriorating living conditions and reinforce patriarchal ideologies. 

Ultimately, the precarious situation of vulnerable groups obstructs their political activism (Mittelhammer et al. 2023; 10). In other words, sanctions have a detrimental effect on “economic, psychological, social and political aspects of [women] empowerment” (Hall, Seyfi, Vo-Thanh, 2022; 1736). Foreign policies that fail to account for these realities underscore and perpetuate geopolitical hierarchies. Rafia Zakaria argues that Germany's FFP centres Western – “white women's [–] nationalistic and security interests” (Zakaria, 2022). White-centric assumptions of “Feminism” echo imperial narratives and reinforce notions of white supremacy. The notion that European foreign policy empowers Iranian civilisation fosters a White Saviour Complex, implying the necessity to import “Western values” of civilisation, freedom and democracy into a “backwards and fundamentalist society” (Ranjbar, 2021; 356). 

The implementation of economic sanctions has inadvertently exacerbated the struggles faced by the very population it aims to support. Analysis of the impact of sanctions on Iranian society thus suggests that economic sanctions entrench socio-economic deterioration and patriarchal structures, thus complicating political activism. These dynamics undermine the foundational goals of Germany’s FFP: Rights, Resources and Representation. Ultimately, policies that claim to be feminist but fail to account for the respective contexts reinforce Western hegemony.   

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Author Bio: 

Mara Bentzin is pursuing a degree in English, German, and Educational Sciences at the University of Leipzig and spent her second year studying abroad at the University of Edinburgh.