Gender, War, and World Order

Motivated by the lack of scholarly understanding of the substantial gender difference in attitudes toward the use of military force, Richard C. Eichenberg has mined a massive data set of public opinion surveys to draw new and important conclusions. By analyzing hundreds of such surveys across more than sixty countries, Gender, War, and World Order offers researchers raw data, multiple hypotheses, and three major findings.

Eichenberg poses three questions of the data: Are there significant differences in the opinions of men and women on issues of national security? What differences can be discerned across issues, culture, and time? And what are the theoretical and political implications of these attitudinal differences? Within this framework, Gender, War, and World Order compares gender difference on military power, balance of power, alliances, international institutions, the acceptability of war, defense spending, defense/welfare compromises, and torture. Eichenberg concludes that the centrality of military force, violence, and war is the single most important variable affecting gender difference; that the magnitude of gender difference on security issues correlates with the economic development and level of gender equality in a society; and that the country with the most consistent gender polarization across the widest range of issues is the United States.

Richard C. Eichenberg is Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University. He is the author of Public Opinion and National Security in Western Europe.

This book provides a valuable analysis of gender and foreign policy attitudes that will interest students of international relations and public opinion.

Valerie Hudson, Texas A&M University:

Gender, War, and World Order is a welcome and substantial contribution to the literature on sex differences in foreign policy attitudes. Richard C. Eichenberg provides cross-sectional analysis, as well as longitudinal and cross-national analysis. This book will stand as the must-cite work on the topic for decades to come.

Elizabeth Saunders, Georgetown University, and author of Leaders at War:

This book will be an essential read on gender, war, and public opinion. Using a vast array of empirical evidence, it maps patterns of opinion about national security and shows that the gender gap is real but varies in important ways. An impressive achievement.

Deborah Jordan Brooks, The Gallup Organization, and author of He Runs, She Runs:

Spanning conflicts, countries, and time, this book is certain to become a go-to source for scholars and students to understand when and where men and women diverge towards 'hawk' versus 'dove' positions on polls, and for anyone who would like to better understand public support for defense-related issues overall.

Robert Shapiro, Columbia University, and coauthor of The Rational Public:

Richard C. Eichenberg provides an analysis that will be a landmark for past and future studies of gender differences in attitudes towards matters of national security in international affairs. Gender, War, and World Order should be highly regarded by students of public opinion and foreign policy.