Unpacking women's tourism work in a sanctioned destination

This study examines how international economic sanctions reshape women's work and livelihoods in Iran's tourism sector through the theoretical lens of feminist political economy. Drawing on interviews conducted in two phases around 2018 and again in 2024, the study unveils how sanction pressures operate across macro, meso , and micro levels, giving rise to three interrelated processes: gendered economic scarring , whereby sanctions deepen women's labour exclusion; sanction-driven informalisation , through which economic risk is shifted from institutions to women's insecure work; and a political economy of survival , in which women's adaptive labour sustains households without producing empowerment. By reconceptualising sanctions as long-term pressures on tourism economies, the study extends research on tourism crises, labour relations, and gendered inequality in crisis-ridden destinations. • Examines women's tourism work under sustained international economic sanctions • Applies a feminist political economy lens to tourism in sanctioned economies • Defines gendered economic scarring and sanction-driven informalisation • Conceptualises women's survival work as part of a political economy of crisis • Shows women's resilience reflects constrained agency not empowerment