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Women and Men Politicians’ Response to War: Evidence from Ukraine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

Taylor J. Damann
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Washington University of St. Louis, MO, USA
Dahjin Kim*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Washington University of St. Louis, MO, USA
Margit Tavits
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Washington University of St. Louis, MO, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: dahjin.kim@wustl.edu

Abstract

Does war deepen gender inequalities in politicians’ behavior or help erase them? We draw from the terror management theory developed in psychology to argue that the onset of a violent conflict is likely to push politicians to conform more strongly with traditional gender stereotypes because it helps individuals cope with existential fears. To test our argument, we use data on Ukrainian politicians’ engagement on social media (136,455 Facebook posts by 469 politicians) in the three months before and after the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and interrupted time series analysis, to assess the effect of conflict on politicians’ behavior. We find that conflict onset deepens gender-stereotypical behavior among politicians in their public engagement. We also show that, consistent with our argument, gender biases among the public are magnified during war.

Information

Type
Research Note
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The IO Foundation
Figure 0

FIGURE 1. Average number of posts, by gender, before and after the invasion

Figure 1

Table 1. Effect of war on politicians’ engagement

Figure 2

Table 2. Effect of war on positive sentiment

Figure 3

FIGURE 2. Changes in topic proportions before and after the invasion, by gender

Figure 4

Table 3. Effect of war on topic proportions

Figure 5

FIGURE 3. Daily average reactions per post before and after the invasion

Figure 6

TABLE 4. Effect of war on public reactions

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