Compromised? Partisanship and Gender Politics in US Foreign Policy Legislation

• In Event: The Gendered State and Women's Equality

Abstract

In terms of partisan divisions in the US Congress, two historical cleavages are 1) how to best represent the interests of women (Swers 2002, Wolbrecht 2010) and 2) how to best represent the US in foreign policy (Scott and Carter 2009). On October 5, 2017, President Trump signed the Women, Peace, and Security Act (WPSA) into law, a rather unique event. Since 2012, the Women, Peace, and Security Act (WPSA) has been sponsored by Democrats and Republicans, by men and women, over four different Congresses, and under unique partisan legislative-executive dynamics. Given these repeated failures, how and why did WPSA pass the 115th Congress and get signed into statute? What does this reveal about congressional decision-making, partisanship, and global gender politics? Through content analysis of the legislation over time and qualitative analysis of interviews with legislative staff and issue advocates, I show how legislative compromise on WPSA was ultimately reached, illustrating the thick ties between domestic gender politics and American foreign policy legislation. I find that the gender politics of the 2016 US Presidential election motivated Republican members of Congress to show greater support for women as a group. Issue advocates and Democratic members of Congress then agreed to three key compromises to ensure WPSA passage: 1) let a Republican be the lead bill sponsor; 2) remove references to the United Nations and Obama’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security; and 3) limit the women’s rights policy language. I discuss what each of these compromises imply for domestic partisan politics, global gender politics, and the future of women’s rights and American foreign policy.

Author

• Sara Angevine, Whittier College