Gender Bias in the U.S. Foreign Service

• In Event: Bureaucracy in International Relations I: Bureaucratic Representation

Abstract

Do bureaucracies make optimal use of their available human capital, or do prejudices and personal biases hamper the organization’s ability to achieve its objectives? We study this question in the context of the U.S. Foreign Service, an elite bureaucracy tasked with managing the foreign relations of the world’s major superpower. We introduce the Key Officers dataset, a novel dataset that tracks the careers of over 40,000 individual U.S. diplomats over a half century—the most comprehensive dataset on a country’s diplomatic corps to date. With these data, we examine how institutional and leadership changes differentially affect women’s and men’s advancement through the bureaucracy. This paper makes contributions to the study of representation in governmental organizations, and carries implications for the structure and effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy.

Authors

• Matt Malis, Texas A&M University

• David Lindsey, Baruch College, CUNY

• Calvin Thrall, Columbia University