War and Social Hierarchies

• In Event: Gendered Implications of War

Abstract

Under what conditions do wars lead to changes in domestic social hierarchies? Existing scholarship has shown that gender and ethnic inequalities can be sources of armed violence, but less work has explored the potential for war to shape the institutions and norms that give some groups more power than others. This project explores two key mechanisms by which war can upend existing gender and ethnic power imbalances: war can serve as a catalyst for social movements led by groups that had been excluded from power, and war can attract external peacemakers and peacekeepers that influence the post-conflict political, economic and social institutions. Our project uses available data—including from the Varieties of Democracy, Comparative Constitutions Project, and the Ethnic Power Relations data—and also analyzes new data to examine the changes in gender and ethnic hierarchies during and immediately after all inter- and intrastate wars since WWII.

Authors

• Kaitlyn Webster, Duke University

• Priscilla Torres, Duke University

• Kyle Beardsley, Duke University