Women Leaders, Donor Perception, and Foreign Aid Allocation

• In Event: Foreign Policy and the Politics of Foreign Aid

Abstract

Women leaders are widely perceived as more likely to build durable peace, reduce corruption, and improve governance in the societies they lead (Dollar et al 2001; Regan and Paskeviciute 2003; Esarey and Chirillo 2013; Tripp 2015). We contend that this perception leads donor states to favor recipient states led by women in the allocation of foreign aid.
Although there has been a rise in female heads of government and the descriptive representation of women in legislatures in the global south, especially in post-conflict countries, there has not been much attention paid to the consequences women’s leadership for these states’ ability to attract foreign aid. Our study addresses this question by asking whether donor states – and especially those in which women play a larger role in political life – favor recipient states in which women have achieved greater access to political decision making. Irrespective of their actual impact on decision making, we contend that the perception that they bring different values to their role as leaders influences the donor states’ aid allocation. We investigate this question by building – and then analyzing – a dataset of donor-recipient dyads covering the period 1990-2016.

Authors

• Gabriela Cirenia Okundaye, University of North Texas

• Marijke Breuning, University of North Texas