An Empirical Analysis of the Women and Peace Hypothesis

Year 2021, Volume: 10 Issue: 1, 5 - 21, 10.12.2020

Malek Abduljaber İlker Kalın

https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.612487

Cited By: 3

Abstract

For decades, social scientists have questioned
whether women are more politically tolerant, peaceful, and less likely to
prefer war to solve international conflict compared to men. Empirical analyses
have been limited to a few geographic regions: North America (the United
States); the Middle East (Israel and the core Arab World); and Africa (Rwanda).
Furthermore, the measurement of the dependent variable, perceptions of war and
peace, has been either evaluated with a single item or with a few items tapping
on various dimensions of war and peace. This paper extends the geographic
coverage in the literature to include a cross-national analysis containing
North American, Latin American, Western European, Eastern European, African,
Asian and Pacific nations, and utilizes thirteen items measuring gender
differences in attitudes towards the perception of war, conflict resolution, foreign
policy attitudes, international organizations’ appeal, political tolerance, and
international cooperation. The analysis utilizes the most up-to-date data of
national representative surveys, the World Values Survey and the Arab
Barometer, featuring mean comparison methods to supply readers with simple
results informing the relationship between gender and perceptions of war and
peace on a global level. The evidence reveals that there is no difference in
perceptions between men and women regarding international conflict perceptions
across countries.

Keywords

Women and Peace Hypothesis, International Conflict, Peacebuilding, Middle East, Gender and Politics

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