This virtual issue considers recent articles published in Politics & Gender on gender and American foreign policy. The articles here have a wide-scope and capture the various realms where gender issues shape policy and, in turn, are shaped by policy. In light of the election of the first woman U.S. vice-president and the end of the war in Afghanistan, insight on the intersection of gender and American foreign policy is essential to understanding the future of international politics.

In the past few decades, a revolution in military affairs has occurred with the increased use of robotics in warfare. As Lorraine Bayard de Volo shows, this revolution challenges our preconceptions of war as a masculine enterprise wherein the remote nature of drone warfare is deemed less valorous for drone operators – despite the emotional and psychological trauma garnered by the soldiers. In turn, the American military and its soldiers have sought to redeem the masculine performance of war through debates of recognition for military service and an increased gendering of military targets.

Understanding the interaction across levels of analysis has long been a major focus in International Relations scholarship. Yet, as Sara Angevine points out, further work is needed to understand how domestic policies towards women affect what Angevine calls women’s foreign policy. Through a qualitative comparative case study, Angevine finds that domestic anti-abortion politics in the United States affected key foreign policy bills such as the failure to pass the International Violence Against Women Act.

Are women more dovish than men? In two separate studies, Yuval Feinstein and Michael Hansen, Jennifer Clemens, and Kathleen Dolan find that women are consistently more likely to oppose military action than men but that this opposition is contingent upon other factors. Using survey data over a span of 25 years, Feinstein shows that different real-life military interventions produce larger and small gender gaps in support for the use of force. Supporting this view, Hansen and his coauthors move the analysis further with a focus on the intersection of partisanship and gender on support for military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan along with general use-of-force scenarios broadly.

The U.S. government is by no means the only relevant American actor in international politics. In examining U.S. private foundations, such as the Gates Foundation, Jill Irvine & Nicholas Halterman find that foundation funding has mixed consequences in advancing women’s empowerment causes across the world. As these scholars show foundation funding has steady risen in the past two decades; pointing towards a future where nongovernmental organizations play an increasingly large role in the fight for global gender equality.

- Kevin Bustamante, University of Notre Dame, Politics & Gender Editorial Assistant.

We are pleased to offer free access to the articles below until the end of 2021.