A War of Their Own: Retesting the Gender Gap in Support for War

• In Event: Gender and Foreign Policy

Abstract

The gender gap in support for war, that women are less likely than men to support war under most circumstances, is one of the most consistent findings in public opinion research. While many plausible mechanisms have been suggested to explain why this is, Brooks and Valentino (2011) were the first (only?) to have used survey experiments to attempt to isolate the effect of these mechanisms. They tested whether altering the stakes or war or the context of war would alter the gender gap. They found that when the war is framed as humanitarian (rather than strategic/economic), women become more likely to support the war than men. Similarly, they find that when the war is framed as authorized by the United Nations Security Council (rather than not authorized), women become more likely to support the war than men. I build off of this research by attempting to replicate their results using the same experimental design. I find that while women’s support for war increases between the control and treatment conditions under both scenarios, men’s support for war also increases between the control and treatment groups under both scenarios. This suggests that women and men respond in similar ways to the treatments, rather than in separate ways as Brooks and Valentino found. Furthermore, I found that men’s support for war is less than women's under both conditions of both scenarios. This could provide new evidence that the gender gap in support for war has completely dissolved (as some recent public opinion polling has shown) or flipped (where women support war more than men). To explain this, I identify an omission in the gender gap in support for war literature, that it has strictly treated men’s opinion on war as the baseline and attempted to theorize about why women deviate from this. I propose three mechanisms that may explain why men’s support for war is increasing.

Author

• Thomas Worth, St. Olaf College