Gender As a Variable in Studies of War and Peace: Variance and Context.

In this paper we review the role gender 'as a variable' has played in international research. We review how the analytical category of gender has been operationalized in IR studies. Generally, operationalization of gender has been at multiple levels and has been measured as a characteristic of individuals and collectives. For example, studies that examine the hypothesis that 'women work for peace, and men wage war' have operationalized gender as both an analytical category at the individual level denoting biological sex as well as a characteristics of society indicating domestic gender equality. These categories have been used to predict foreign policy attitudes as well as state violence and militarism. How useful are these different categories and do they tell us anything about the phenomena we wish to explain (i.e the dependent variable) other than variation by gender categories? In this paper, we argue that past quantitative studies of gender have relied on essentialist arguments about sex differences. In order to take full advantage of gender as an analytical category in quantitative studies, we must consider the gendered nature of the dependent variable (e.g. the state and state action) as suggested by more interpretive methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]