One of the Boys?: Women, Military Force, and Foreign Policy Decision Making

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As women increasingly populate the inner sanctum of military and foreign policy decision making, will their presence change the use of military force and the conduct of international affairs, or will they behave as one of the boys? These two books raise this question in quite different but intriguing ways. In Women and the Use of Military Force, Howes and Stevenson have compiled a set of readings which explore the effect of sex and gender on attitudes, behaviors, and policies related to the use of military force. The McGlen and Sarkees book, Women in Foreign Policy: The Insiders, reports on a study of women insiders in the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense. Their research focuses on factors that influenced these women and on the ways in which they were able to influence the foreign policy process. In both cases the authors draw on the ongoing debate concerning whether women are inherently more peaceful than men, and they attempt to understand and predict what will come of women's increased participation in politics. These works have much to contribute to several literatures, including foreign policy studies, feminist international relations theory, peace studies, political organizations, women and politics, and political psychology. They have particular relevance to the burgeoning literature on feminism and international relations, providing important data which supplements recent feminist critiques of international relations theory and practice (Elshtain, 1987; Enloe 1983, 1989; Peterson, 1992; Tickner, 1993; Sylvester, 1994) and feminist political theory (Brown, 1988; Mansbridge, 1990; Young, 1990; Ferguson, 1991; Coole, 1993; Elshtain, 1993). The starting point for Women and the Use of Military Force is the stereotype that women are inherently more peaceful than men. If this is so, Howes and Stevenson contend, one would predict that the inclusion of greater numbers of women in the military or in foreign policy decision making should alter the nature of those domains in a more peaceful direction. In order to probe this question, the editors have assembled a fascinating collection of articles from a wide range of disciplines, such as sociology, psychology, physics, and political science. The first section of the book deals with what the editors refer to as