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Women and political aggression: the effects of gender, political ideology and perceived threat on support for direct and indirect political aggression
Abstract
The relationship between gender and political aggression is hotly debated and the empirical evidence is often mixed. While many surveys find a gender gap, with women less supportive of politically motivated aggression and violence than men, numerous case studies point to women’s active involvement in political violence and refute the association of women with peacefulness. This article argues that the gender–aggression relation depends upon (1) the type of political aggression under study (i.e. direct vs. indirect political aggression), and (2) contextual factors, notably the salience of a protracted conflict. Using original datasets representing Israeli Jews (N = 3,126) we found that in the context of protracted conflict, gender has a unique effect on support for indirect forms of political aggression, over and above other central predictors of political aggression (i.e. political orientation and threat perceptions), such that women are actually more supportive of politically motivated social distancing and exclusion of out-groups in conflict as compared to men. Women and men, however, do not differ in their support for direct, politically motivated, violent acts against government officials. Results also shed light on potential mechanisms underlying these differences (and lack thereof), in the context of protracted conflict. The findings cast further doubt on the stereotype of ‘peaceful women’ and point to the need for policymakers concerned with conflict resolution to address context-related factors when considering the gender-based differences in political aggression.
... Behaviors that cause harm to others are often differentiated along the active/passive dimension (Ayduk, May, Downey, & Higgins, 2003;Ben-Shitrit, Elad-Strenger, & Hirsch-Hoefler, 2017;Buss, 1961), ranging from more overt, confrontational harm (e.g., harassment or infliction of physical harm) to more subtle, indirect harm (e.g., neglect and disregard). In the present research, we focus on the most "passive" end of this spectrum: harming the target through inaction (Buss, 1961;Richardson, Ferguson, & Daniel, 2006). ...
Groups in conflict can act against one another in various ways, such as inflicting physical injury upon out-group members, actively expelling them from the social sphere or denying them basic rights. While intergroup conflict literature is mostly dedicated to identifying the psychological determinants of such overt, or active, forms of intergroup harm, less research has been dedicated to the psychological mechanisms that intensify intergroup harm inflicted through inaction, such as ignoring the out-group, withholding assistance, and avoiding mutual cooperation. The goal of the present research is to identify the distinct emotional determinant of “harmful inaction” in intergroup conflict across various socio-political contexts, focusing on the experience of group-based contempt. Across seven studies, using different methods, we find that support for harmful inaction towards the rival in conflict is uniquely associated with group-based contempt, compared to anger (Studies 1a-d, 2–3), hate (Studies 1b-d, 2), disgust (Studies 1b-d, 2, 4), and fear (Studies 1b-d, 2). These findings were consistent across different contexts of intergroup conflict, different specifications of harmful inaction, and different sets of controlled emotions. Taken together, our results suggest that group-based contempt has a unique contribution to fueling and maintaining intergroup conflicts by triggering a unique type of intergroup harm.
... These different threats can be categorized as realistic, involving one's tangible resources, including income and one's own life, or symbolic, involving one's intangible goods such as culture and values (Stephan, Ybarra, & Bachman, 1999). Importantly, many studies measure a composite of both symbolic and realistic threat together under the construct of "intergroup threat" (Beck & Plant, 2018;Djupe & Calfano, 2013;Dunwoody & McFarland, 2018;Seate, 2012;Shitrit et al., 2017;Verkuyten, 2009). Finally, the onset of a new wave of terrorism has shown a third type of threat -terroristic threat. ...
Individuals express support for civil liberties and human rights, but when threatened tend to restrict rights for both others and themselves. However, the question of whether or not rights are restricted to punish others or protect ourselves remains unclear. This meta-analysis integrates the findings of perceived threats effect on support for restrictions of civil liberties from 1997 to 2019. It includes 163 effect-size estimates from 46 different papers involving 91,716 participants. The presence of threat increased support for restrictions against outgroup members significantly more than ingroup members, providing a possible punitive explanation for support for restrictions of civil liberties. These findings contribute to the debate of rights and their relationship with deservingness, suggesting that we delineate those who deserve human rights and those who do not.
This article analyses the gendered differences in digital political communication of Ukrainian politicians and international figures on Twitter/X during Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. Narratives are captured using a structural topic model of 130,000 tweets by 74 Ukrainian politicians and the 223 international figures they targeted most to understand how men and women use different narratives during war. Men’s communications concentrated on military and diplomatic narratives while those of women focused on civilian trauma and Russian war crimes but contained no calls for compromise, disproving Western theories that women are more pacifist than men. A gender affinity effect was evident between men Ukrainian politicians and international figures, possibly due to men’s higher positions of power. These findings contribute knowledge to how gender impacts narrative use during armed conflict.
Feminist scholars have long debated quantification trends in the social sciences. Of particular concern has been the extent to which the prestige assigned to quantitative methods may reinforce 'malestream' dynamics in academic knowledge production. 'Malestream' dynamics include the (implicit or explicit) privileging of a male-centric lens in the research process and the association of 'hard' numerical data with notions of 'scientifically superior' masculinity. We build on these discussions by asking how the rise in quantitative writings may affect gender disparities in the civil war literature. Using descriptive data from a newly coded dataset that contains 1,851 articles published in high-ranking journals between 1998 and 2018, we, firstly, illustrate how-in the generally male-dominated field of civil war research-the author gender gap is particularly pronounced among quantitative writings. Secondly, we present an in-depth discussion of three articles that use statistical analysis to test the effects of violence on prospects of post-traumatic growth. A distinct difference between the three articles is that they tend to be more sceptical of arguments on 'positive change' following violence the more account they take of gender differentiation in their theoretical framing and/or empirical identification strategy. All in all, our arguments call for greater awareness of gender bias in quantitative research, and for more rigour in currently hegemonic standards of what 'counts' as reliable evidence.
The Japanese public has been assumed to possess a deeply ingrained aversion toward the acquisition of nuclear weapons. We employ a survey experiment to ascertain whether this aversion is unconditional or may erode in the face of hypothetical deterioration in Japan's security situation, and in particular a hypothetical withdrawal of the US security-nuclear umbrella, increased North Korean nuclear weapons testing activities, and movement by South Korea toward the attainment of a nuclear arsenal. We find that the Japanese nuclear aversion may come under stress in the face of such developments. Additionally, we find that the elasticity of Japanese attitudes with respect to the nuclear option in the face of external security deterioration may be associated with an important individual-level demographic characteristic, namely, gender.
The question of whether women are more oriented towards peace has been debated in the research literature for several decades but has not been systematically tested in conflict‐driven areas. The aim of our article is twofold: (1) to suggest a conceptual framework regarding gender differences in support for peace in intractable conflict and test it in a prominent case study; and (2) to examine whether major events leading to conflict reescalation have differential effects on women and men. Across 145 polls carried out on a monthly basis among nationally representative samples of Jewish‐Israelis between 1995 and 2006, we found only marginally higher levels of support for the Oslo Accords among women versus men, while conflict‐related worldviews—political ideology and religiosity—had a much larger effect. Furthermore, violent reescalation in the conflict had a stronger effect on reducing men's levels of support for the Oslo Accords than those of women. Robustness analysis of 196 monthly surveys from 2002 until 2018 examining the effect of gender on support for negotiation provided further support for our findings. Overall, our analyses indicate that sex‐based differences play a minor role in explaining attitudes towards peace in situations of protracted violent conflicts at different stages, compared to the prominent effects of political ideology and religiosity.
Across the globe, women are increasingly more visible as leaders and activists in radical‐right parties and movements. Does women's visibility in radical‐right politics, both institutionalized and non‐institutionalized, affect public acceptance of radical‐right agendas? The present paper proposes a “radical‐right gender mainstreaming model,” arguing that women in radical‐right politics are perceived by the general public through a prism of feminine gender stereotypes, which counteract radical‐right parties’ and movements’ masculine stereotypes, thus “softening” their image and making them more acceptable to the general public. Across four experimental studies conducted in the Israeli context, we find strong evidence that women's visibility as radical‐right parliamentary representatives (Studies 1a&1b) and as radical‐right political activists (Studies 2a&2b) increases acceptance of and support for these parties’ and movements’ agenda, particularly among women. We further demonstrate that these effects are mediated by the attribution of feminine stereotypes (warmth) to women versus men political actors. Implications of these findings are discussed. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
What drives citizens’ support for violence against domestic political actors? Despite its potentially devastating consequences, there is surprisingly little research on the antecedents of this unique form of political violence. Building upon recent insights on the psychological implications of exposure to conflict on support for political violence, we examined the motivations underlying public support for violence against politicians in the context of protracted conflict. Using a two-wave panel design among Jewish-Israelis, we examined the interactive effects of conflict-induced perceived threat, psychological distress, and political orientation on support for violence against politicians. Consistent with previous findings on the psychological implications of conflict, our findings suggest that conflict-induced threat perceptions play an important role in predicting support for violence against politicians. Nevertheless, our findings point to important boundary conditions to these effects: the strength of the relationship between perceived threat and attitudes towards political violence is qualified by the level of chronic conflict-related psychological distress, and the direction of the effects of perceived threat is qualified by individuals’ self-placement on the left-right continuum. More specifically, we found that perceived threat increased rightists’ support and decreases leftists’ support for violence against politicians, only under high, but not low, conflict-related psychological distress. The main conclusion of this study is that support for violence against politicians can be seen as an ideology-driven protective strategy against the negative psychological implications of exposure to violent conflict. By pointing to the importance of understanding the interactive role of psychological and political factors in determining public support for such acts, our findings therefore contribute to the understanding of a relatively understudied phenomenon with potentially catastrophic effects on political stability.
In most countries, men are more likely to vote for parties of the populist radical right (PRR) than women. The authors argue here that there are two mechanisms that might potentially explain this gender gap: mediation (women's attitudes and characteristics differ from men's in ways that explain the PRR vote) and moderation (women vote for different reasons than men). They apply these two mechanisms to general theories of support for PRR parties—the socio-structural model, the discontent model, and the policy vote model—and test these on a large sample of voters in seventeen Western and Eastern European countries. The study shows that the gender gap is produced by a combination of moderation and mediation. Socio-structural differences between men and women exist, but the extent to which they explain the gender gap is limited, and primarily restricted to post-Communist countries. Furthermore, women generally do not differ from men in their level of nativism, authoritarianism or discontent with democracy. Among women, however, these attitudes are less strongly related to a radical-right vote. This suggests that men consider the issues of the radical right to be more salient, but also that these parties deter women for reasons other than the content of their political programme. While the existing research has focused almost exclusively on mediation, we show that moderation and mediation contribute almost equally to the gender gap.
How does the threat of becoming a victim of terrorism affect voting behavior? Localities in southern Israel have been exposed to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip since 2001. Relying on variation across time and space in the range of rockets, we identify the effect of this threat on voting in Israeli elections. We first show that the evolution of the rockets’ range leads to exogenous variation in the threat of terrorism. We then compare voting in national elections within and outside the rockets’ range. Our results suggest that the right-wing vote share is 2 to 6 percentage points higher in localities that are within the range—a substantively significant effect. Unlike previous studies that explore the role of actual exposure to terrorism on political preferences and behavior, we show that the mere threat of an attack affects voting.
Global population-level patterns in female participation in contemporary political and revolutionary conflict remain largely unknown as systematic empirical research in the area is lacking. Accordingly, this study systematically documented the participation of a comprehensive sample of women involved in conflict around the world. A statistically derived model of female participation is proposed that consists of four thematic roles representing specific patterns of activity: active, representing fighting and leadership activities; caring, representing traditional feminine tasks; support, representing logistically based tasks, and; ideological, representing activities that propagate the ideology of the group. The contribution of the model to theory, research, and practice is considered.
Does exposure to political violence prompt civilians to support peace? We investigate the determinants of civilian attitudes toward peace during ongoing conflict using two original panel datasets representing Israelis (n=996) and Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza (n=631) (149 communities in total). A multi-group estimation analysis shows that individual-level exposure to terrorism and political violence makes the subject populations less likely to support peace efforts. The findings also confirm psychological distress and threat perceptions as the mechanism that bridges exposure to violence and greater militancy over time. The study breaks ground in showing that individual-level exposure – necessarily accompanied by psychological distress and threat perceptions – is key to understanding civilians’ refusal to compromise in prolonged conflict.
For many years women tended to vote more conservative than men, but since the 1980s this gap has shifted direction: women in many countries are more likely than men to support left parties. The literature largely agrees on a set of political-economic factors explaining the change in women's political orientation. In this article we demonstrate that these conventional factors fall short in explaining the gender vote gap. We highlight the importance of a religious cleavage in the party system across Western European countries, restricting the free flow of religious voters between left and right parties. Given that surveys show us a constantly higher degree of religiosity among women and a persistent impact of religion on vote choice, religion explains a substantial part of the temporal as well as cross-country variation in the transition from the more conservative to the more progressive voting behavior of women.
This report is the very first to supply comprehensive and comparable data about the extent of prejudice and discrimination against the main target groups in eight selected European countries. This representative data, based on the findings of a research project on group-focused enmity in Europe (GFE Europe) initiated by the University of Bielefeld, allows us to analyse the differences between countries and discover what they have in common. The objective of this publication is to make the findings and data available to the international research community in an accessible and manageable form, and above all to stimulate social and political discussion. Accordingly, the focus is on advancing the political discussion about prejudice and discrimination rather than on the complexities of theory. If Europe wishes to know whether prejudices, stereotypes and discriminatory mentalities in individual member states are endangering or even corroding democracy then the findings of the present publication supply an alarming wake-up call. We hope that our data and analyses will invigorate the European discussion and supply empirical evidence that has hitherto been sorely lacking.
An analysis of anti-democratic mentalities in eight European countries prepared by Prof. Dr. Andreas Zick, Dr. Beate Küpper and Andreas Hövermann for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s Project on Combating Right-wing Extremism (Forum Berlin).
Full book: http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/do/07908-20110311.pdf
For many years women tended to vote more conservative than men (the 'old' gender vote gap), but since the 1980s this gap in many countries has shifted direction: now women in many countries are more likely to support left parties than men of the same age, in the same income bracket, and at the same educational level (the 'new' gender vote gap). The literature largely agrees on a set of political-economic factors explaining the change in women's political orientation: changed employment patterns, women's higher educational achievements, and higher divorce rates. These trends turned women into supporters of generous social programs that promise to 'de-familialize' services formerly provided privately within the family. In this paper, we demonstrate that these conventional political-economic factors fall short in explaining the old gender vote gap. We may therefore also harbor doubts whether they provide us with a full story for the new gender vote gap. Instead, we highlight the importance of religion for the gendered pattern of voting behavior that we observe. We argue that where vote choice expressed preferences on a non-economic, i.e. mainly religious issue dimension, parties in the past could afford - at least to some extent - ignoring voters' socio-economic interests. Given that surveys show us a constantly higher degree of religiosity among women and a relatively persistent and strong impact of religion on vote choice, religion can indeed, we argue, explain a substantial part of the old and new gender vote gap. --
This article moves beyond the discussion of domestic violence in the military to a broader accounting of the militarization of domestic violence in Israel. In contrast to the dominant civilian-military paradigm, which assumes a limit on an army's effect on society, in Israel, boundaries between the military and society are highly permeable, even ambiguous. The civilianization of the army and the militarization of society in Israel render incomplete the research model of domestic violence in the military. Thus, the article explores how the centrality of the military, a pervasive ideology of militarism, and the militarization of society shape perpetration, understandings, and experiences of and responses to domestic violence in Israel. Specifically, four components of the militarization of domestic violence are discussed: causality, competition, critique, and context. The article closes by reflecting on what is gained by shifting the analytical perspective from domestic violence in the military to the militarization of domestic violence.
Research on war, conflict, and terrorism has traditionally focused on the motivations of male combatants to participate in political violence. Such a focus has largely ignored the role of women who wield political violence. This article revisits one of feminist International Relations (IR) most basic questions, “Where are the women?” and encourages an expanded view of security and conflict resolution that asks how combatant women might contribute to current scholarly understanding of conflict and conflict resolution processes. I argue that the thirty-year conflict remained intractable in part because of the exclusion of those Loyalist women who wielded political violence, seriously limiting the British and Irish governments' ability to understand and resolve the conflict. Included in the analysis is interview data collected in an eight-month empirical study conducted by the author in 2006 with thirty women who identify as past or present members or supporters of Loyalist paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland. The unique perceptions of Loyalist women combatants of four cross-border agreements between 1974 and 2006 are used to illustrate how a feminist approach to conflict resolution can serve as an innovating starting point in theorizing about and attempting to resolve conflict.
Two international policy analysts scrutinize the increasingly important operative and support roles women play in various terrorist organizations around the world.
Women as Terrorists: Mothers, Recruiters, and Martyrs is the first post-September 11 book to examine women’s multifarious roles in terrorist organizations of all stripes around the world. It covers political, religious, ethno-separatist, and Maoist groups in countries as diverse as Iraq, Palestine, Chechnya, Sri Lanka, Colombia, South Africa, the Philippines, and Northern Ireland.
Modeling terrorist organizations as purposive organizations that depend for support, recruitment, and rationale on a culturally defined community of sympathizers, the authors explore why women become involved in terrorist groups, how terrorist leaders turn the societal attributes of women to advantage in designing terrorist campaigns, and how women fight for the right to assume strategic and combat roles in terrorist groups. The authors conclude with a review and projection of the rapidly evolving trends in the use of women in terrorist organizations, paying particular attention to al-Qaeda and its affiliated groups and considering the implications of their findings for counterterrorist strategies.
The present study examined two explanations for gender differences in expression of direct and indirect aggression. The social sanction model suggests that aggressor and target gender effects may be accounted for in terms of social sanctions against behaving aggressively; indirect aggression is the likely outcome of inhibitions against expression of direct aggression. The threat argument suggests that high levels of direct aggression in male‐male dyads as well as apparent inhibitions against harming females might be accounted for by the fact that males are more threatening targets than are females. Research participants completed a questionnaire measure of direct and indirect aggression twice, once with reference to their behavior toward a same‐gender target and once with reference to their behavior toward an other‐gender target. Although most direct aggression was reported by male aggressors toward male targets, gender of target did not relate to indirect aggression. Males reported approximately equal levels of indirect and direct aggression. Although females reported using more indirect than direct aggression, they did not differ from males in their reports of the frequency of use of indirect aggression. These results provided some support for both models of gender effects on human aggression and suggest the appropriateness of a relatively complex model of gender effects on aggression. Aggr. Behav. 25:425–434, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
A woman did that? The general reaction to women's political violence is still one of shock and incomprehension. Mothers, Monsters, Whores provides an empirical study of women's violence in global politics. The book looks at military women who engage in torture; the Chechen 'Black Widows'; Middle Eastern suicide bombers; and the women who directed and participated in genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda. Sjoberg & Gentry analyse the biological, psychological and sexualized stereotypes through which these women are conventionally depicted, arguing that these are rooted in assumptions about what is 'appropriate' female behaviour. What these stereotypes have in common is that they all perceive women as having no agency in any sphere of life, from everyday choices to global political events. This book is a major feminist re-evaluation of women's motivations and actions as perpetrators of political violence.
Recent scholarship indicates that gender correlates strongly with Americans' attitudes toward the use of military force. However, most of its evidence derives from the study of major wars, and the field needs more historical research to evaluate the evolution of gender difference over time. I redress these limitations by updating and extending my earlier (2003) analysis of public support for the use of force during the 1990s. I analyze 965 individual survey questions concerning the use of US military force in twenty-four historical episodes, beginning in 1982 with military aid to El Salvador and continuing through the recent wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. I find that substantial gender difference characterizes a large number of historical episodes and types of military action. Nonetheless, the magnitude of gender difference varies substantially; in many cases, a substantial percentage of women supports the use of force. The difference between men and women varies most with the salience and level of violence, and women are more sensitive to humanitarian concerns. Women display more sensitivity to casualties in some historical cases, but during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the casualty sensitivity of men gradually increased as the wars dragged on, and gender differences therefore decreased. Thus, I argue that scholars should turn their attention to studying individual-level differences between and among men and women in support for using military force. I also discuss the political and policy implications of the findings.
Women have participated in political violence throughout history, yet the concept of women as active proponents and perpetrators of political violence and terrorism is not widely accepted. Viewed as being forced by partners, sexually abused or brainwashed, the possibility of political motives is not often considered. Paige Whaley Eager addresses this to establish whether the stereotypical view is misplaced. She utilizes a framework to analyze women engaged in political violence in different contexts in order to examine structural variables, ideological goals of the organization and personal factors which contribute to involvement. Case study rich, this informative book provides an indispensable guide to examining women’s role in left/right wing engagement, ethno-nationalist/separatist violence, guerrilla movements and suicide bombers.
The eleven-year civil war in Sierra Leone from 1991 to 2002 was incomprehensibly brutal-it is estimated that half of all female refugees were raped and many thousands were killed. While the publicity surrounding sexual violence helped to create a general picture of women and girls as victims of the conflict, there has been little effort to understand female soldiers' involvement in, and experience of, the conflict. Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone draws on interviews with 75 former female soldiers and over 20 local experts, providing a rare perspective on both the civil war and post-conflict development efforts in the country. Megan MacKenzie argues that post-conflict reconstruction is a highly gendered process, demonstrating that a clear recognition and understanding of the roles and experiences of female soldiers are central to both understanding the conflict and to crafting effective policy for the future.
This book explores women’s militant activities in insurgent wars and seeks to understand what women ‘do’ in wars.
This book examines the relationship between women and terrorist activities in the post-World War II era. Utilizing comparative research into 26 terrorist organizations world-wide, the work identifies a dichotomy whereby women are significantly more active in domestic terrorist organizations than in international groups. Women and Terrorism argues that domestic terrorist organisations employ revolution, secession, or other means to change internal aspects of the state and the social and economic structure it maintains. This offers the possibility of change in women's societal status; therefore, women are drawn to domestic terrorist organizations in much higher proportions and choose a much greater level of activity, entering the ranks of combat, leadership, and policymaking. By contrast, international terrorist groups oppose outside forces, such as imperialism, capitalism, Western culture, or other more nebulous concepts. Gonzalez-Perez argues that female lack of participation in these activities reflects the fact that women will be relegated to the status quo, regardless of the success or failure of the international terrorist movement.
This chapter summarizes research that both reflects and exemplifies the recent resurgence of interest in the social and psychological characteristics and processes that give rise to ideological forms. Ideology is an elusive, multifaceted construct that can usefully be analyzed in terms of "top-down" processes related to the social construction and dissemination of ideology as well as "bottom-up" processes, including dispositional and situational factors, that make certain ideological outcomes more likely than others. The chapter briefly summarizes the contents of this volume, focusing especially on the cognitive and motivational antecedents and consequences of adopting specific ideologies, the functions served by those ideologies, and the myriad ways in which people accept and justify (versus reject) aspects of the social and political worlds they inhabit. Current challenges and future directions for the study of ideology and system justification are also discussed.
Background
The gender gap in education in favour of girls is a widely known phenomenon. Boys generally have higher dropout rates, obtain lower grades, and show lower engagement. Insight into factors related to these academic outcomes could help to address the gender gap.AimsThis study investigated, for Dutch language classes, (1) how boys and girls differ in behavioural engagement, (2) which teacher support dimensions (autonomy support, structure, involvement) may explain gender differences in engagement (mediation hypothesis), and (3) whether and which of these teacher support dimensions matter more for boys’ as opposed to girls’ engagement (moderation or differential effects hypothesis).SampleA total of 385 Grade 7 students and their 15 language teachers participated in this study.Methods
Teacher support was assessed through student reports. Student engagement was measured using student, teacher, and observer reports. By means of structural equation modelling, the mediating role of the teacher support dimensions for gender differences in behavioural engagement was tested. The potential differential role of the teacher support dimensions for boys’ and girls’ engagement was investigated through multigroup analysis.ResultsBoys were less engaged than girls and reported lower support from their teacher. Autonomy support and involvement partially mediated the relationship between gender and behavioural engagement. Autonomy support was demonstrated to be a protective factor for boys’ engagement but not for girls’. Structure and involvement contributed equally to engagement for both sexes.Conclusions
Although involvement and autonomy support partly explained the gender gap in engagement (mediation hypothesis), more support was found for differential effects of autonomy support on boys’ versus girls’ engagement (differential effects hypothesis).
Greater theoretical consensus and cohesion could offer critical insights for the broader community of international relations scholars into the role that gender plays in spawning and sustaining processes of violence. This review essay examines the role of gender in generating and perpetuating violence and aggression, both in theory and practice. I make four central claims. First, in many studies involving the role of sex and gender in violence, specific causal models tend to remain underspecified. Second, a divergence in fundamental assumptions regarding the ontological basis of sex differences implicitly permeates and shatters this literature. Third, arguments that men and women are more or less likely to fight appear too simplistic; rather, it is worth considering that men and women may possess different motivations for fighting, and fight under different circumstances and for different reasons. Finally, systematic differences in the variant psychologies of men and women regarding the relative merit of offense and defense exert predictable consequences for public opinion surrounding the conduct of war in particular.
While a significant literature on women's participation in armed rebel groups exists, much of this work is focused on individual cases or regional comparisons among movements. This has led to a lack of cross-national work on women in insurgencies, and a limited understanding of the extent to which women are engaged in civil conflict internationally. This article introduces new data on women's involvement in seventy-two insurgencies active since 1990, and assesses the validity of several assumptions about women and rebellion drawn from existing literature on women in conflict and on civil wars generally. I show that women are active in rebel groups much more often than current scholarship acknowledges. This involvement includes frequent service in combat and leadership roles, where male participants are often presumed to be the default. Finally, while forced recruitment tactics are frequently used to bring women into service, much of their participation appears to be voluntary in nature.
A considerable literature has been devoted to the study of Islamic activism. By contrast, Nadje Al-Ali’s book explores the anthropological and political significance of secular-oriented activism by focusing on the women’s movement in Egypt. In so doing, it challenges stereotypical images of Arab women as passive victims and demonstrates how they fight for their rights and confront conservative forces. Al-Ali’s book also takes issue with prevailing constructions of ‘the West’ and its perceived dichotomous relation to ‘the East’. The argument is constructed around interviews which afford fascinating insights into the history of the women’s movement in Egypt, notions about secularism and how Islamist constituencies have impacted on women’s activism generally. The balance between the empirical and conceptual material is adeptly handled. The author frames her work in the context of current theoretical debates in Middle Eastern and post-colonial scholarship: while some of the ideas are complex, her lucid style means they are always comprehensible; the book will therefore appeal to students, as well as to scholars in the field.
In the post-World War II era, American women have been consistently less militaristic and more opposed to war than American men. Theorists, both feminist and not, have attributed such differences to gender itself, maternalism, and feminism. Drawing on the American National Election Study 1991 Pilot Study, we explore these hypotheses and discover no support for the maternalist explanation, some evidence in favor of the feminist accounting, and substantial support for the gender explanation. We also probe into the structure of political thinking in these areas and discover that the roots of women's and men's thinking usually differ even when they basically agree on the "bottom line." In particular, men's attitudes are much more partisan in their origins than are women's.
What explains the form and frequency of women’s participation across violent political organizations (VPOs)? While contemporary news coverage, historical accounts, and a small body of empirical political science suggest wide variation in the roles and activities of women in militarized extremist movements around the world, we still lack a deep understanding about the causes of this variation. This paper develops new theoretical insights into the ways in which different organizational preferences and behaviors work to facilitate or impede women’s voluntary VPO presence, and exploits original data on the form and frequency of women’s participation in 166 violent political organizations active in 19 African countries from 1950 to 2011 to test our hypotheses. We find that indicators of organizational 'demand' for women -- namely, group size, recruitment platforms and tactics – are more closely related to women’s participation in violent political groups than women’s aggregate willingness to serve or society-level respect for women’s political rights – all common ‘supply’ indicators.
Accepted for publication, January 2015.
The gender gap in support for war represents the largest and most consistent policy gender gap in public opinion polling. We know little about the causes of this gap, however, because scholars have not effectively isolated how or why the gender gap changes in response to the characteristics of different wars. We conducted two controlled experiments on demographically representative samples of U.S. adults to see if systematically varying the stakes of war (economic/strategic vs. humanitarian) or multilateral support for the action (U.N. approval vs. U.N. rejection) affects the size of the gender gap. We propose an interactive theoretical perspective that explicitly links these characteristics with key individual-level characteristics that might be driving the gender gap. Our findings indicate that the gender gap is strongly dependent on the specific context of the war. In fact, we find that the gender gap reverses when the war has U.N. approval or if the stakes of the war are humanitarian.
In an effort to contribute to the dialogue between gender studies and international studies, this report presents findings from an empirical investigation based on the integrated secondary analysis of survey data from Israel, Egypt, Palestine, and Kuwait. The goal is to assess the utility of both gender and attitudes pertaining to the circumstances of women in accounting for variance in views about war and peace, and thereafter to examine the degree to which political system attributes constitute conditionalities associated with important variable relationships. Major findings include the absence of gender-linked differences in attitudes toward international conflict in all four of the societies studied and a significant relationship in each of these societies between attitudes toward gender equality and attitudes toward international conflict. Based on data from the Arab world and Israel, with attitudes about a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict treated as the dependent variable, the research also aspires to shed light on more practical considerations pertaining to the international relations of the Middle East.
Focusing on the issue of Arab representation in the Israeli-Jewish society, this study describes the negative intergroup psychological repertoire about the enemy (Arabs) that evolves in the context of intractable conflict (Arab-Israeli conflict). This analysis is of special importance because the negative psychological intergroup repertoire feeds the continuation of the conflict, and thus, serves as a major obstacle to conflict resolution and the peace making process. The major challenge of changing the negative psychological intergroup repertoire is emphasized.
Research on violent mobilization broadly emphasizes who joins rebellions and why, but neglects to explain the timing or nature of participation. Support and logistical apparatuses play critical roles in sustaining armed conflict, but scholars have not explained role differentiation within militant organizations or accounted for the structures, processes, and practices that produce discrete categories of fighters, soldiers, and staff. Extant theories consequently conflate mobilization and participation in rebel organizations with frontline combat. This article argues that, to understand wartime mobilization and organizational resilience, scholars must situate militants in their organizational and social context. By tracing the emergence and evolution of female-dominated clandestine supply, financial, and information networks in 1980s Lebanon, it demonstrates that mobilization pathways and organizational subdivisions emerge from the systematic overlap between formal militant hierarchies and quotidian social networks. In doing so, this article elucidates the nuanced relationship between social structure, militant organizations, and sustained rebellion.
Much of the current scholarship on wartime violence, including studies of the combatants themselves, assumes that women are victims and men are perpetrators. However, there is an increasing awareness that women in armed groups may be active fighters who function as more than just cooks, cleaners, and sexual slaves. In this article, the author focuses on the involvement of female fighters in a form of violence that is commonly thought to be perpetrated only by men: the wartime rape of noncombatants. Using original interviews with ex-combatants and newly available survey data, she finds that in the Sierra Leone civil war, female combatants were participants in the widespread conflict-related violence, including gang rape. A growing body of evidence from other conflicts suggests that Sierra Leone is not an anomaly and that women likely engage in conflict-related violence, including sexual violence, more often than is currently believed. Many standard interpretations of wartime rape are undermined by the participation of female perpetrators. To explain the involvement of women in wartime rape, the author argues that women in armed group units face similar pressure to that faced by their male counterparts to participate in gang rape. The study has broad implications for future avenues of research on wartime violence, as well as for policy.
Conventional wisdom holds that women are more peace-loving or more pacific than men. Most of our knowledge about the gender gap in foreign policy attitudes originates from the United States, but it cannot be taken for granted that these results can be generalized to other countries. This article examines gender differences in foreign policy attitudes in Denmark; it discusses the systemic factors behind such gender differences as well as the systemic factors that cause foreign policy attitudes to influence elections. By the 1980s a clear gender gap in foreign policy attitudes had developed in Denmark. Several explanations for this gender gap are examined in the article: the theory about women's greater distance to foreign policy, the theory about specific women's values, and the theory about the political and feminist radicalization of women. The article concludes that Denmark's gender gap in foreign policy attitudes in Denmark in the late 1980s was due primarily to a general left-wing mobilization of women. Paradoxically, however, this development also seems linked to a revitalization of traditional women's values. The discussion of the systemic causes of the gender gap and of its election impact centers around three factors: the salience of foreign policy, the political mobilization of women, and the available political alternatives in a given election.
Gender oppression has been a feature of war and conflict throughout human history, yet until fairly recently, little attention has been devoted to addressing the consequences of violence and discrimination experienced by women in post-conflict states. Thankfully, that is changing. Today, in a variety of post-conflict settings-the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Colombia, Northern Ireland-international advocates for women's rights have focused bringing issues of sexual violence, discrimination, and exclusion into peace-making processes. This book considers such policies in a range of cases and assesses the extent to which they have had success in improving women's lives. It argues that there has been too little success, and that this is in part a product of a focus on schematic policies like straightforward political incorporation rather than a broader and deeper attempt to alter the cultures and societies that are at the root of much of the violence and exclusions experienced by women. The book contends that this broader approach would not just benefit women, however. Gender mainstreaming and increased gender equality has a direct correlation with state stability and functions to preclude further conflict. If we are to have any success in stabilizing failing states, gender needs to move to fore of our efforts. With this in mind, the book examines the efforts of transnational organizations, states, and civil society in multiple jurisdictions to place gender at the forefront of all post-conflict processes. The book offers concrete analysis and practical solutions to ensuring gender centrality in all aspects of peace making and peace enforcement.
Researchers have long been curious about the mismatch between women's fear of crime and their objective risk of victimization. The present research, which examines fear of terrorism, provides a unique opportunity to explore gender differences in reactions to a specific type of violent victimization, terrorism. The article analyzes data collected from a telephone survey of 532 inhabitants from New York and Washington on the topic of reactions to terrorism-related information. Analysis of these data finds that women are more fearful, engage in more avoidance behaviors, and are more likely to seek information in response to terrorism-related information. Moreover, women differ from men in predictors of their terrorism fears as well as engagement in terrorism-related avoidance and information-seeking behaviors. Possible explanations for these results are discussed.
Although a number of studies have reported gender differences on attitudes toward the use of force in foreign policy, several recent studies have reported that gender is a weak and non- significant predictor of foreign policy attitudes. The authors find that gender differences are significant even after a variety of demographic controls and that gender is among the most important demographic predictors of foreign policy attitudes. Gender differences have widened in scope over time and now include both foreign policy goals and tools. These differences are largest among the youngest cohorts. The determinants of women's and men's foreign policy attitudes, however, are essentially the same.
Based on empirical research among women's antiwar organizations worldwide, the article derives a feminist oppositional standpoint on militarization and war. From this standpoint, patriarchal gender relations are seen to be intersectional with economic and ethno-national power relations in perpetuating a tendency to armed conflict in human societies. The feminism generated in antiwar activism tends to be holistic, and understands gender in patriarchy as a relation of power underpinned by coercion and violence. The cultural features of militarization and war readily perceived by women positioned in or close to armed conflict, and their sense of war as systemic and as a continuum, make its gendered nature visible. There are implications in this perspective for antiwar movements. If gender relations are one of the root causes of war, a feminist programme of gender transformation is a necessary component of the pursuit of peace.