Women Leaders and the Double Bind of International Trade

• In Event: Policymakers as Individuals

Abstract

Emerging scholarship has begun examining differences in the policy choices of women leaders. This scholarship has examined the impacts of leadership characteristics on foreign policy choices in the area of conflict. Given that international trade comprises a substantial amount of the interactions between leaders, our study focused on this issue area will add to the understanding of the behavior of women leaders. Do women leaders have different trade policy behavior than men while they are in office? Past research posits that women leaders face a double bind and that their policy decisions help them navigate the double bind. Women can be hawkish and competitive to show they are masculine and cooperative to show they are feminine. Using the double bind theory, we expect gendered misperceptions and the double bind to affect how women act in the area of international trade. Specifically, we hypothesize that women who feel more pressure to act nurturing at home will favor non-tariff barriers to trade in an effort to protect domestic industries whereas women who feel more pressure to act aggressively will favor fewer barriers to trade in an effort to make more trade deals. We investigate this relationship using data from 1970-2015.

Authors

• Courtney Burns, Bucknell University

• Jamie Elizabeth Scalera, Georgia Southern University