Replication Data for: More Equality for Women Does Mean Less War: Descriptive Representation, Legislative Votes, and International Conflict

Although the pacifying effect of gender equality is said to be a near-consensus, the causal mechanisms remain underspecified, and causal identification is weak. I address those shortcomings by providing the first causal evidence regarding the effects of women’s legislative representation on the state’s foreign military actions. I argue that women legislators affect foreign policies via legislative votes, and hence that the effect depends on whether military deployment requires legislative approval. I test the hypotheses by exploiting as-if random variation in mixed-gender close races and classifying the gender of 270,553 candidates in 253 legislative elections across 50 countries. The analysis indicates that women’s close victories reduced the state’s military actions but only with legislative veto power. The analysis of legislative votes also suggests that women legislators influenced other legislators and substantially reduced votes for military deployment. These results imply the crucial roles of legislatures in the gender-peace thesis.

尽管性别平等的和平效应被认为近乎达成共识，但其因果机制仍未得到充分明确的阐释，因果识别也较为薄弱。本文通过首次提供关于女性立法代表对国家对外军事行动影响的因果证据，弥补了上述研究缺陷。本文提出，女性议员通过立法投票影响对外政策，因此该效应取决于军事部署是否需要获得立法机关的批准。本文利用混合性别势均力敌竞选场景中的准随机变异，对50个国家的253场立法选举中的270553名候选人的性别进行分类，以此检验研究假说。分析结果显示，女性候选人以微弱优势当选会减少国家的军事行动，但仅在立法机关拥有否决权的情境下成立。对立法投票的进一步分析还表明，女性议员会对其他议员产生影响，并大幅降低支持军事部署的投票比例。上述研究结果揭示了立法机关在性别和平命题中的关键作用。