The Chechen War and an Emerging Gender Gap in Russia

Abstract

Scholarship on the impact of gender on political attitudes has shown that women have more liberal attitudes than men do, both generally and in relation to specific policy areas. One area of an especially large gender gap is in attitudes about foreign policy and the use of force, where women are much less likely to support war and armed conflict. An exception to this gender gap is found in post-communist countries, where men and women often do not display significantly different political attitudes. Employing a variety of survey data on public opinion about the Chechen conflict in Russia, we investigate whether a modern gender gap has emerged in Russia, and the form that this gender gap has taken. We find strong, diverse evidence of a gender gap in Russia, with women expressing more dovish attitudes towards the conflict in Chechnya.