Economic crisis and war intensify domestic violence in Iran, while homeless women, women who use drugs and sex workers remain among those whose suffering is least visible.
Sociologists, psychologists and social workers have identified many forms of violence. Domestic violence encompasses a wide range of behaviours, including physical, psychological and economic abuse. It is therefore not limited to physical violence, even if physical violence is its most severe form. Humiliation and threats, insults and controlling behaviour, emotional and economic deprivation, the silent treatment and deliberate neglect can all constitute forms of violence.
Under severe economic pressure, people who are already psychologically worn down become angry more quickly and more prone to impulsive reactions. Under such conditions, the home, which should offer safety, can become a place where anger is discharged.
Feelings of failure, powerlessness, shame, anxiety and hopelessness may already exist within individuals or across society. But during a crisis, they take different forms and find new outlets: sometimes through physical assault, and sometimes through psychological pressure directed at dependants and those in weaker positions.
It is under such conditions that an understanding of women as possessions—an attitude reinforced by both formal law and social convention—can turn women into punching bags for the release of social, psychological and economic anger.
Fatemeh Babakhani, founder of the Mehr Shams Afarid safe house, says there is a direct relationship between economic insecurity and the intensification of domestic violence:
“During the first weeks of the recent war, a significant proportion of those who came to us were from families facing severe financial difficulties because of sudden unemployment or workplace closures. We therefore heard numerous accounts from women who, as their household income disappeared, experienced growing tension and violence at home alongside the economic pressure.
“In many cases, anger caused by unemployment and the sense of being unable to provide for the family emerges uncontrollably within family relationships. Restricting women’s movements, cutting them off from relatives, denying them access to financial resources, controlling their bank accounts, and creating fear and psychological insecurity for family members and children are all forms of violence that have increased in recent months.”
(Fararu, “Unsettled Homes: Accounts of Rising Domestic Violence After the War”)
The most difficult aspect of domestic violence is not limited to the violence itself, but also lies in women’s inability to escape its cycle.
Leaving an abusive relationship is a long and complicated process. Even educated, middle-class women who become trapped in domestic violence cannot necessarily leave it easily. For many poorer women, economic dependence, lack of employment opportunities and uncertainty about family support are the primary obstacles. But concern for children and cultural and social pressure can keep women of any class trapped in abusive relationships.
Child marriage, forced marriage and traditional practices within some communities—particularly among parts of the Afghan migrant population in Iran—persist even without explicit support from formal law. In the case of child marriage, however, the Civil Code itself provides legal backing for the practice.
Within such traditional structures, economic pressure further intensifies vulnerability, while social norms can prevent ongoing violence from ever reaching the attention of official institutions.
The most painful part of the cycle of violence concerns homeless women, women who use drugs and sex workers.
Living with poverty, social exclusion and illness, these women face multiple, accumulated forms of deprivation, often in marginalised urban areas. Without support from their families or other protective institutions, they are continually exposed to physical, psychological and sexual harm.
Poverty in Tehran’s satellite cities and other major urban centres has drawn sex workers from different parts of the country to these areas, often alongside drug dependency. These women are continually exposed to exploitation and sexual violence that goes almost entirely unrecorded, making reliable statistical measurement virtually impossible.
Above all, they are dehumanised, and the economic crisis generated by war intensifies that process.
In fact, some of the most severe forms of violence fall on homeless women, women who use drugs and sex workers. Because these women have few recognised rights, this process of dehumanisation is reproduced in law, where they are treated as a “social problem.”
Without formal support networks, these women have little possibility of filing complaints or pursuing cases. Their distrust of official institutions, which themselves often regard them as criminals, means that they endure overt physical and psychological violence while remaining largely outside public view.
During social crises and war, these marginalised groups become even more deeply trapped in cycles of violence, while social stigma renders their suffering invisible.
The Many Forms of Violence
In times of crisis, violence not only increases; its forms also change, often shifting from overt physical violence towards less visible forms of abuse.
The silent treatment, humiliation and threats, financial control, inducing guilt and assigning blame, psychological degradation and similar behaviours are among these forms of violence.
Those who bear the greatest burden include women who are financially dependent on husbands, fathers or brothers; their children and other children living in highly conflictual households; people with disabilities; older people; and women pushed to the social margins.
Although there is a clear relationship between poverty and violence, this does not mean that middle-class women or women with financial independence are outside the cycle of abuse. Among these groups, violence may shift away from physical and sexual assault towards psychological, emotional and economic forms.
Mahnaz, a young woman who holds a relatively senior administrative position at the gas utility in one of Iran’s major cities, told Radio Zamaneh that her husband monitors all her bank accounts.
Her husband works in the bazaar and has repeatedly run into serious financial trouble amid its extreme fluctuations. He pressures Mahnaz emotionally into issuing cheques to his creditors, many of whom, she says, are fraudsters who had previously deceived him in business. As a result, bounced cheques issued in her name have dragged Mahnaz into court proceedings and even exposed her to the possibility of imprisonment.
She recalls one occasion when she called her husband from work to tell him what was happening. He refused to answer his phone and then remained unreachable for a long period. Mahnaz was left alone to face a growing number of creditors, without even fully understanding how the situation had begun, while repeatedly being forced to navigate the corridors of the courts.
She says that during the war, when government buildings were under constant threat of bombardment, she was still wandering through judicial offices trying to deal with these cases.
Situations like this can, of course, occur outside wartime. But severe economic conditions, men’s heightened anger, and threats to abandon the household or take children away from women can leave women vulnerable to abuse even when they are financially independent.
War further compounds the problem because complaints of this kind are generally slow to be processed—if they ever reach the stage of a formal complaint at all.
And these situations do not necessarily end when the war does. Economic pressure and unresolved tensions remain.
In another case, F.R., a homemaker, resisted a demand from her husband after he ran into financial trouble in the bazaar. He wanted her to hand over keepsakes she had inherited from her mother, believing they could be sold for a substantial amount.
When she continued to resist, her husband physically assaulted her for the first time since their marriage.
He then left the house without warning, abandoning her with their two young children, aged three and six. Her family refused to support her, leaving her trapped in isolation and poverty.
Escaping this cycle is rarely easy. The legal vacuum and the failure of already ineffective state institutions to protect these women point to the need for structural change.
Only clear and explicit protective laws would allow women to use legal channels to defend themselves against violence by husbands, fathers and sometimes even sons, without fear of stigma or social condemnation.
Such laws do not currently exist.
