Women Leaders, Trade, Conflict, and Cooperation: How Cooperative are Women?

A growth of research has begun studying the impact of gender and leadership on foreign policy, with particular attention paid to crisis bargaining. Specifically, this research has found that gendered stereotypes impact women’s ability to bargain in conflictual foreign policies. However, little research has looked at the cooperative realm of international politics. We aim to remedy this. This past research asserts that gendered stereotypes lead to expectations that women are more peaceful thus impacting how they can behave in crisis situations. Given this assertion, do women navigate cooperative foreign policies differently than men as well? In particular, are women more likely to be involved in the Dispute Settlement Mechanism (DSM) of the World Trade Organization? We posit that due to the political double bind, women leaders will be more likely to serve as a complainant to the DSM, and due to gendered expectations will also serve as respondents. The DSM is an especially important institution to examine given that it is a conflictual-like entity within a cooperative structure. In other words, this allows us to see if crisis bargaining expectations still hold within an cooperative framework. Our research further contributes to our knowledge and understanding of how gender works within foreign policy. We examine disputes within the DSM for the years 1995-2020. Paper co-authored with Jamie Scalera Elliott who will not be presenting.