Signaling Woman and Leader: Navigating the Double Bind as a Foreign Policy Decisionmaker

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-3-2021

Publication Title

Journal of Women, Politics and Policy

Volume

42

Issue

4

First page number:

332

Last page number:

351

Abstract

The effects of gender on foreign policy decision-making is an understudied topic. While some research has examined the role of women chief executives in conflict, little research has looked at what role women defense and foreign affairs ministers play on outcomes. In this article, we examine the role that women chief executives, defense ministers, and foreign affairs ministers play in both conflictual and cooperative foreign policies. Specifically, we ask whether women foreign policy leaders are more likely to enact foreign policy decisions and whether they will be more extreme in their decisions. Past research posits that women leaders face a double-bind. Women must be both leader and woman while in office. We argue that this pressure will affect the decisions women make in foreign policy. We examine this relationship from 1980 to 2008 and find that women foreign policy leaders are different from men; they are more active in conflictual foreign policy and have more extreme cooperative foreign policy.

Keywords

Gender; Foreign policy; Cooperation; Conflict; Double-bind

Disciplines

Policy Design, Analysis, and Evaluation | Public Policy

Language

English

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