Gender and Foreign Policy: Are Female Members of Congress More Dovish than Their Male Colleagues?

• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Author: William Bendix,Gyung-Ho Jeong
• Date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912919879764
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912919879764

Political Research Quarterly

2020, Vol. 73(1) 126 –140

© 2019 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912919879764

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Article

A large literature shows that women—elites and the mass

public—are more pacifistic than men are. They oppose

the use of military force, have concerns over war casual-

ties, and support humanitarian interventions at much

higher rates than men do (Eichenberg 2003; Gelpi,

Feaver, and Reifler 2006; Nincic and Nincic 2002;

Norrander 1999; Shapiro and Mahajan 1986). In addition,

research finds that democratic governments spend less on

military budgets and conduct fewer military operations

when their parliaments see an increase in the number of

elected women (e.g., Clayton and Zetterberg 2018; Koch

and Fulton 2011; Shea and Christian 2017). The evidence

that female legislators are more dovish than their male

counterparts are appears to be overwhelming. However,

much of this evidence is drawn from the aggregate deci-

sions of legislatures, not the individual decisions of law-

makers. Most studies simply do not consider the degree

to which gender—as opposed to party loyalty and con-

stituency pressure—independently shapes the foreign

policy preferences of legislators. To date, only one study

has controlled for party affiliation and electoral influ-

ences while examining the individual security decisions

of female lawmakers (see Swers 2007). But this analysis

has focused narrowly on the pattern of bill sponsorship

among male and female senators after the 9/11 terrorist

attacks. No study has looked at the full range of foreign

policy issues over many decades to compare men’s pref-

erences to those of women.

The purpose of our article is to conduct this compari-

son, and to do so with all the necessary controls, in order

to see whether female and male legislators make different

decisions on the same national security questions. We

focus our study on the U.S. Congress because its mem-

bers can vote freely without being punished by caucus

leaders. To start, we collect all foreign and defense policy

votes cast by members of Congress between 1973 and

2016. These votes concern everything from the Vietnam

and Iraq wars to nuclear nonproliferation and weapons

sales. We then apply a dynamic ideal point estimation

technique to these votes to plot each member on a hawk-

dove dimension. Once we have estimated each member’s

position, we see whether women in Congress are more

dovish than their male colleagues are.

Our initial results indicate that, in the House and to a

lesser extent in the Senate, female legislators vote differ-

ently than male legislators do on foreign policy items.

However, once we account for the relative conservatism

of each member’s district or state, the gender differences

decrease sharply. Elected women are still more dovish

than elected men are, at least in some periods, but this

difference largely stems from constituency preferences.

When female and male Democrats represent similar vot-

ers, they tend to have overlapping foreign policy

879764PRQXXX10.1177/1065912919879764Political Research QuarterlyBendix and Jeong

research-article2019

1Keene State College, NH, USA

2The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Corresponding Author:

William Bendix, Department of Political Science, Keene State College,

Rhodes Hall S266, M/S 3400, Keene, NH 03435, USA.

Email: wbendix@keene.edu

Gender and Foreign Policy: Are Female

Members of Congress More Dovish than

Their Male Colleagues?

William Bendix1 and Gyung-Ho Jeong2

Abstract

Research shows that female legislators tend to support liberal, pacifistic approaches to foreign policy. But it remains

unclear whether they are dovish because they seek to represent the dovish values of women generally or because

they tend to represent mostly liberal voters. To answer this question, we examine all foreign policy votes cast in

Congress over the last five decades to estimate the ideological locations of House and Senate members on a hawk-

dove dimension. Once we control for partisan and constituency effects, we find only limited evidence that female

legislators are more dovish than their male counterparts are.

Keywords

gender, foreign policy, U.S. Congress, ideal point estimation