A deep and historical examination of how the political influence of women at the ballot box has shaped the course of war and peace.
In the modern age, some parts of the world are experiencing a long peace. Nuclear weapons, capitalism and the widespread adoption of democratic institutions have been credited with fostering this relatively peaceful period. Yet, these accounts overlook one of the most dramatic transformations of the 20th century: the massive redistribution of political power as millions of women around the world won the right to vote.
Through gripping history and careful reasoning, this book examines how the political influence of women at the ballot box has shaped war and peace. What would a world ruled by women look like? For more than a hundred years, conventional wisdom held that women's votes had little effect. That view is changing - it turns out that women voters had a profound effect on the world we know and in ways we hardly understand. A world ruled by women's voices is a world that is less willing to fall in love with war as a noble end in itself, less prone to lapse into violence for the sake of maintaining an image. In other words, it is the world we live in now, more so than we have ever realized.
Author(s): Robert F. Trager, Joslyn N. Barnhart
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 271
City: New York
Cover
Series Page
The Suffragist Peace: How Women Shape the Politics of War
Copyright
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Introduction
1: The Hope for Democracy
Britain and the Fate of the Ottoman Empire
The Sun Never Sets
In Another Democracy Far, Far Away . . .
Conclusion
2: The Hope for Suffrage and Peace in the New Century
Conclusion
3: Gender and Aggression: Nature or Nurture?
Defining Sex
Gender, Aggression, and Preferences about War and Peace
But Why the Gender Gap?
The Role of Biology
How Different Are Male and Female Brains?
Conclusion
4: Suffrage, Democracy, and War
Women’s Suffrage and Peace
What Else Might Explain These Patterns?
Conclusion
5: Women’s Votes and the World Wars
Wilson and Women in the West
A Western Comeback
Women in Britain and the Rise of Hitler
Women and the End of the Cold War
Conclusion
6: Do Women Leaders Spell the End of War?
The Historical Record of Women Leaders and War
Kings and Queens
The Leaders of Today
Leaders Are Not Average
Incentives to Misrepresent
Conclusion
7: Women and War in the Modern Era
The Four Mothers
Shaping an Election
Shifting the Debate
Liberian Women for Peace
A Country Terrorized
Mobilizing for Peace
An Enduring Peace
Women and Japan’s Constitutional Pacifism
The Origins of the “No War” Clause
Article 9, Reinterpreted
Women as Roadblocks to Revision
The Slow Erosion
Conclusion
8: The Future
Who Votes Matters
Activists Put Peace on the Ballot
Communities Build Peace
Protecting Women’s Representation around the World
Changing the Face of Leadership or Changing the Narratives
Appendix
Data on Women’s Suffrage
The Relationship Between Measures of Democracy and Suffrage
Other Possible Explanations
Notes
References
Acknowledgements
Index
