Kal Raustiala 0:03

Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Kal Raustiala, stepping in for Associate Director, Leslie Johns, who's been doing so many of these. It's a great pleasure to be here and to discuss a really interesting, and I think, what you'll you'll see as we get into it very rich book by one of our colleagues, Rob Trager, who I'm going to introduce in a second. As usual in these events, Rob, our speaker, will talk about his work for maybe 15 or 20 minutes. And then he and I will have a conversation. And then we'll open it up to questions from all of you. So please use the Q&A feature, you can really send those questions in starting right now, if you like or as soon as we post. And we welcome those questions. And we'll pose those at the very end. So without further ado, Rob Trager, I think is well known to many UCLA viewers, professor of political science for a long time, here at UCLA, currently at Oxford, where he is at he where he is lead in the Center for Governance of AI. And this book, of course, has nothing to do with AI. But I'm sure he might field a question or two on that if you want. But this book is about the suffragist peace. And Rob, I'm gonna invite you on to tell us more about it.

Rob Trager 1:28

Thanks so much Kal. Yes, at the moment, I'm the leader of the international governance team at the center center for the governance, governance of AI. So I'm so glad to be here. And so glad to be able to talk about this book, which was really kind of enjoyable book to write. We tried to pitch it to a broad audience while also being being rigorous social scientists. It was written with Joslyn Barnhart. And so just I'm just very happy to be able to come and talk to you about it. So the book is about the entrance of women into the political realm over the last century. And in particular, the effect of that on relations between between states. So I want to start with what what everyone believes. And many of you will, will know, folks like Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Paine and and Montesquieu and, and others. These men from the early 19th century and in two of those cases a little bit earlier that the other who thought that democracy was just going to solve so many problems. So many problems are gonna be solved by a democracy, and one of them was war. And, and many of you will know about democratic peace and know about this idea. And, and we sort of believe that they were right, they were so precious. No, they, they really, they really understood what was was going on, they had this idea what was their idea was that there was going to be a harmony of interests between rulers and ruled. So if rulers were, you know, engaging in some frivolous war somewhere, then the people would be able to vote them out of office. And, and so you wouldn't have, you wouldn't have so much war. And people think that that is true. And one of it's a foreshadow, foreshadow a little bit. They think it's true, because they, they sort of forget about the 19th century. And they go to the 20th century where it looks like it's true. But but they forget about this 100 years, and actually, all those folks who were, who were predicting that democracy was going to work so well, they didn't live to see what these increasingly democratic countries in the 19th century, were actually doing. They didn't they didn't live to see it. And I think if they had there would be, they'd have to ask themselves some questions, but I'll come back to that. So but that's what everybody believes that, you know, those liberals they Immanuel Kant and Thomas Paine, they were right. And then, to me, it's fascinating to contrast that with the suffragists. So, the suffragists, they had an idea that it was actually women's suffrage, that would cause a reduction in conflict around the world. And people, a lot of people thought that was silly, or since since the suffrage movement, a lot of people thought that was kind of silly. I don't think people really believe that that is, is a major part of a piece in the world today. So this is fascinating to me, because, in fact, in many ways, it really looks like it's the suffragists who had it right. And these early liberals who maybe didn't have it, so right. So, if you follow the expansion of suffrage in the 19th century, in places like England, what you see is not just a correlation between democracy and war, although you do see that a little bit. But what you also see is, in these democratic countries, it's often the publics that are pushing unwilling elites into war. Because in many cases, that well, first of all, they these publics are participating in a kind of honor culture. And, and that's, that's very clear, for instance, another conflict in the 19th century, the War of 1812 between course, England, and, and the young, United States. That's a case where nobody wanted this war, basically. The British tried to avoid it, they made the concessions that the Americans were asking for, but unfortunately, the boat carrying the news that they made the concessions didn't arrive until just after the Americans had declared war. And then the Americans said, well, we've already done it. So you know, too much trouble to go back on it. And what's amazing is, this war is just a great example of one of many that's framed in these very honor centric, and one might even say masculine terms. So the British envoy to Washington, DC, who tried to avoid this war did not want to see it happen at all, at the end of it. Even he says, and this is a quote, he says that, he can see that something was gained. What does he think was gained by it? He thinks that it was as necessary to the United States as a young country, as a duel is to a young naval officer to prevent his being bullied and elbowed in society. So these are the ways that elites to some degree, but especially publics, are often thinking about war. And over the course of the 19th century, there's sort of a, it's like, there's a test after test after test, to see if this idea of democracy is causing peace is really going to work because democracy is expanding. So in the beginning, it really looks like it's, you know, just a few people, a few wealthy men who who were part of a so-called democracy. But then that expands to more and more men over the course of the century. And so each time there's sort of like a new hope, that maybe now there's enough democracy to bring peace, but it doesn't seem to work that way. So, when we look statistically, there's actually no evidence for a male suffrage peace. So it's not looking good for those early liberals despite despite their reputation. Um, what about the women? Well, one of the things that's amazing to me, we, you know, we forget today, but the suffragists were, they thought of themselves as fighting not for suffrage as an end in it of itself. They thought that they were fighting for policies, that women when they got the vote, would manage to enact. And one of those most prominently was, was peace. They thought women coming to office, were going to bring peace. And so they, they, you know, they had all sorts of tactics for, for advocating for the vote. And I want to read you just one of their posters here, which is a little bit tongue in cheek, cheek, but makes, I think, a serious point. So this one, the title of the poster is why we oppose votes for men. And they say number there are five reasons, number one, because man's place is in the army. Number two, because no really manly man wants to settle any question other otherwise than by fighting about it. Number three, because if men should adopt peaceful methods, women will no longer look up to them. Number four, because men will lose their charm, if they step out of their natural sphere and interest themselves, in other matters, then arms, uniforms, and drums. And finally, number five, because men are too emotional to vote, their conduct at baseball games and political conventions shows this. Well, their innate tendency to appeal to force renders them particularly unfit for the task of government. So, you know, obviously, it's tongue in cheek. But this represents in some way, what these women were thinking. They thought that they had a mission to affect policy. And people thought, at the time, at the time of suffrage, they thought that it was a revolution. They expected women's parties to emerge and compete with men's parties and to have their own sets of issues that would be totally different. So just to revolutionize politics. And of course, once suffrage happened, none of that occurred. Women seem to vote in the United States, they voted slightly lower rates, somewhat lower rates than men did initially. Now, of course, they vote at higher rates, but initially, they voted lower rates. And they see they there was no special women's party, they seem to vote in similar ways to men. So people thought, for 100 years, that women had really no effect on policy. And it's literally only 100 years later, after so many of the women who who fought for it, thought they thought that their movement was a failure because it hadn't had these effects. So now, we're beginning to realize that wait a minute, there, there were effects, there were effects seemingly on the size of governments, which increased. Probably women's suffrage is the reason why World War One is the it was the first war in which spending after the war, didn't return to pre war levels, as it had, always previously. So there are these effects also on things that governments are doing. In some cases, maybe more spending on health care and education, in particular cases, which isn't to say that women are always progressive, because that is absolutely not the case. Not even case, always on on average. But that appears to have happened in in some cases. And what we're beginning to realize is that it rather looks like perhaps the same is true on war and peace. So when we do some statistics, and I won't, I won't give you too many statistics here. But what I will tell you is that, of course, this is all observational data. So for the social scientists out there, you know, it, we can say that things really look like they're having the effects that we say that they're having. But it's hard to absolutely be sure, because we can't randomize. And we can't, we can't do experiments. But we do try to do fixed effects and all sorts of other fancy things. So hopefully, we're able to get to get it at the truth. And what we find is that two autocracies are almost four times as likely to fight as to women's suffrage democracies, but also to democracies, so called democracies, without women's suffrage, are more than three times as likely to fight as two democracies with women's suffrage. And this is even after we do fancy stuff to account for the effects of time and, and other factors. So it, it really looks like the suffragists were onto something and there actually isn't great evidence for democratic peace in the absence of women's suffrage. Okay, so I'll say a couple of other things about the book and then open up to questions. So one thing is that is the question of why, why this is true, or why does it appear to be true and what causes the differences in political preferences? It probably wouldn't surprise you if I tell you that 10 times as many murders are created by men as women. And that's true all over the world. So when it comes to personal aggression, we see these differences. But what about when we look at preferences, political preferences, so not just preferences about what you do, but preferences about what somebody does in your name, through government. And well, it turns out that we find an extraordinarily consistent gender gap on the use of force, consistent across time, and consistent across place. And we wanted to drill down into this. So we actually did a meta analysis of all these experiments that people in the social sciences have been doing on determinants of preferences over war and peace. So we collected a large sample. And we had, I think, over 21,000 respondents in the sample, and then we did it, we do it a t-test there just to check the difference between men and women on average. And, you know, you could argue about whether we should be doing this, but it was sort of fun to do. Because there were, I think it was 67 zeros before it nonzero. In this test, so these populations of men and women are, are different. But But this question of why they're different is such a broad and fascinating one. That is something that I don't think we can answer. And we certainly want wouldn't want a essentialize either men or women. And it certainly isn't the case that all that women are pacifists or anything like that. And in any real world conflict, there are large percentages of men who prefer peace and large percentages of women who prefer war. So it isn't anything like that, we're really talking about averages. But even trying to understand why these averages are the way they aren't brought. We know that cultural factors play a large role. So any sort of biological determinism is not correct. But on the other hand, even in places where culture might make people more prone to support the use of force, we still find the gender gap. In other words, yes, in one place, culture factor, cultural factors may mean that women are more likely to support force. But in general, in those places, we find that men are even more likely to support the use of force. And that's not to say that culture couldn't overwhelm whatever else is going on. But, but we do find these extraordinary patterns. So again, the question is, why they are there? And as I said, I don't think we can know the answer. But I do think we also should take seriously the possibility that some biological factors, that is some factors that are affected by experience, but organized in advance of experience. Some of those factors may also be at play. And here in order to get at this, we can look at animal studies. And and it turns out, that the underlying biology of aggression is what biologists call conserved across much of the animal kingdom that is, underlying biology goes very far back in evolutionary time. So the triggers for aggression between species are totally different. But the biological mechanisms are the same. So that means that some of the studies of animals are quite relevant to understanding human beings. And when we look more broadly, at the animal kingdom, it's much less controversial, that there are these differences in aggression between male and female. And there's all sorts of interesting theory and an explanation that does pretty well and predicting why that would be the case. So so we think that it's important to take seriously the possibility that small hormonal differences and, in effect produce the As large societal effects. That's a possibility that that we that we think is perhaps even likely. But there's lots more to say about that. Okay, I just want to say, one or two other things very quickly, and then we'll open it to questions. One thing to say is, is about women leaders. So given what I've told you so far, you might say, oh, what what would happen if women ruled the world? Would that really be an era of peace? And the surprising answer is it doesn't look that way. Based on the evidence, so far. Turns out, and maybe this is something we'll get into, but when we do the smartest statistical things that we can, and I have to say that that statistical work was mostly done by others. It looks like women in office are maybe even more likely to get into conflict. So we can ask ourselves, why is that? If it's true, why could that be true? And I think there are a couple of different explanations that maybe you're thinking about. And probably one of them is when women and men come into office, they inhabit a certain culture, and maybe there's some pressures to look and act a certain way. Maybe women have particular pressures to look and act a certain way. And maybe that's part of what's going on. There are other possibilities, maybe. And we know, leaders are different from population on average. So maybe that's what's going on. Maybe they're just they're so different that, you know, averages really aren't very, aren't very meaningful. So this is another fascinating question that, that perhaps we can, we can talk about? Yeah, so I'll just say, what if women ruled the world? Well, we don't know, because everybody inhabits a culture. So there isn't really a single answer to that question. But on the other hand, it it looks like if, if we want to have the change that some people expect, and hope for, and it's not enough to have more women leaders, we're going to need to change some other things about the broader culture that they inhabit. At least that's the way it looks. Okay, I think I'll stop there. And I really look forward to your questions. Thank you.

Kal Raustiala 23:00

Okay, thank you, Rob. So super interesting thesis and kind of explication of it in the book and a lot of issues to raise. But maybe I'll just start with one of the things that you discuss in the book. And I think for, for people who are maybe familiar with the Democratic Peace literature, which is pretty, pretty broad, there's been a lot of discussion on the idea that, you know, democracies somehow are distinct. Maybe they're more peaceful, other people say, no, it's about a liberal peace, or even there's no peace at all. It's just a statistical artifact, an argument that you note in the book. Other people say it's about nuclear weapons, so there's a lot of debate here. So I guess I would just like to hear a little bit about how you see your argument about suffrage, which, you know, honestly, is really intriguing. How does that fit into all of this? And how do you how do you distinguish yourself from some of these other strands? You address some of this, but I guess I just want to kind of press you a little bit more. And specifically, the all the many critiques that have said, well, they're actually really, isn't a meaningful democratic piece? To those apply to your argument?

Rob Trager 24:16

Yeah, so that's a great question. I mean, so I suppose. So I have a little bit of like, I want to critique the democratic peace of myself. But I also want to defend the democratic peace. So I'm gonna add some straight into the stream for this event. But the reason for that is because, you know, if you just have some regression, and then you kind of willy nilly throw other things into that regression, even if they're just, let's say, randomly generated variables. If you throw enough randomly generated variables in or you know, even if you do one at a time, but you do it enough times, one at a time, throwing in another variable, eventually, you're going to find one that washes out democratic peace or whatever result you're talking about. So I think there's a real sort of burden when it comes to these kind of prominent findings lots of people kind of gone after that, I think we should be sort of skeptical. And this applies to us, too, we should be skeptical kind of a new claim that says, oh, yeah, I found something that explains it better. Because I, you know, found this thing in a regression that seems to work better. So I think everybody should be skeptical of that. And, and so I, I would argue that we're doing something that is a bit different. And it's, it's a bit different. For one reason, I don't want to, you know, make even too strong of a defense, though, I think people should be skeptical of everything. But the reason why I would say it's different is, is theory, because it's really theory that you have to find, convincing, you know, if you've, if you think the theory is sort of post hoc, that they found something that kind of worked in there, and then they convinced themselves of the theory, then you should be skeptical. But if you think that maybe they even started with theory, and then went to testing, then you should be a lot more, you should give a lot more credence to what they they may have found. And in our case, the project actually began, it fully began not with any large end regressions, but with looking at experimental data. We were just looking at the data that we had seen in experiments, that was showing differences between what we call self identified binary sex. So people who check man versus woman on surveys. We were noticing these huge differences in our own data. And, and I hadn't really been aware, there was already, of course, literature on that. But I hadn't really been very aware of that literature. But that the differences were so large, in my own data that I thought, well, I, you know, I need to look at other people's data and see if it's there, too. And it was there, too. And then we started to think about it that, you know, this really seems to relate to the democratic peace. And in many ways, it's a friendly amendment, but democratic peace, because actually, Bruce Russett and kind of maybe the most classic statement of the democratic peace talks about this as a possible explanation. But the strange thing is that nobody did anything with it to check out whether there really was an explanation for for many decades. So yeah, so I can defend democratic peace. Democratic institutions are necessary to the effects that we're finding. But the institution's themselves do not appear to be sufficient. The preferences of publics seem to matter a lot.

Kal Raustiala 27:59

I mean, intuitively, that makes a lot of sense. And I, you know I, like you, I think, generally, am inclined to believe that there is a difference with democracies. And I don't find it super fascinating to kind of break down all of these different critiques. But just because it is such a, such a long standing debate amongst political scientists, just worth raising, I guess I was curious to I forget, now, whether you just said this, or I read it in your book. But you do at one point, sort of gesture at the famous book by Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature, which some viewers might be familiar with, where this was the kind of best selling book that looks at this broader trend throughout history of our kind of move from a very violent and cruel, even sadistic kind of society. And he's got these incredible examples of things that were really common, not even in the middle ages, but just even a few centuries ago. And you sort of avert to some of this with regard to duels and things like that, where we were just a very violent place in a lot of ways, and the world has gotten a lot better. And we're now much more peaceful. And, you know, of course, political scientists, being political scientists have, you know, attacked Pinker as some kind of interloper from psychology or whatever yeah, field is, but, you know, the book's pretty compelling. And so I guess I was just curious here to how you see your arguments about the role of women fitting in because I could imagine, you know, Pinker as I recall, doesn't tell a story with that's focused on women. He tells a story of a kind of general sense of enlightenment values, rippling through mostly European society is his focus. And kind of eventually we sort of wise up and become, we realized that like, you know, torturing animals is terrible and dueling is terrible, and we, you know, we start to become more peaceful. But it does seem like that also coincides with the broader emancipation of women in Western society, not just suffrage, but move towards respecting women as equal participants in a society rather than as property of, of men and their families, which is the way women were treated for so long. And so I'm just curious how you see these arguments connecting or not?

Rob Trager 30:21

Yeah, no, that's a such a great question. And I'm so glad to get it because I had a little bit of correspondence with Steven Pinker about this. And, and I'm a fan of his book. Actually, I know that some people in my field, will be upset at me for that. But I, I am a fan of his book. And I think that it is, I would call it an awesome synthesis of just huge amounts of data and literature. And it does make this overarching case that, that I think, is interesting, not airtight, but, but interesting. And so actually, he, his book is so large, that he does talk about the impact of women and women's suffrage, or he does, it's like four times the size of your book or something. I mean, you know, yeah, exactly. It's yeah, at least. And so he says, I think some some very sensible things about women's suffrage, and women's rights in general and sort of feminization. And so I think I think, you know, what he's saying there is, is very much of a piece with, with what we're saying in, in that respect. You know, he doesn't delve into to the evidence, I don't think and in the, you know, not certainly not the evidence, the interstate evidence of suffragist peace in the way that we do. And there are others, Valerie Hudson and, and others who investigate the, what they see as the impact of women's rights on war and peace. And they tell, I think, a somewhat different story from the one that that we're telling. We see these as complementary, we, we think that, you know, the way we read the data, it does look like women's rights in and of themselves separately from suffrage, could be could well be having some effect. The story that Valerie Hudson told I think, is, is really fascinating. She says that gender models are the first models of conflict resolution. So if a child sees conflicts between their parents resolved in a certain way, then that's what they think, is the model for conflict resolution. So if women have rights, and and those conflicts are resolved in a civilized, I guess we could say, or, you know, peaceful way, then then that means that this, it has an effect on the broader society, which I think is just a fascinating idea, and really nicely argued. We think that there's a very specific effect of, of suffrage. Because we think that without suffrage, you know, you just see it, you see, before suffrage, you have these social movements, that can galvanize people, but they just don't have power, they don't have a claim to power. And then once there's suffrage, those same sorts of social movements have a different kind of power. And so we think, you know, and we, and that's what we also test statistically, you know, looking at using time, and, and diet, fixed effects. For the, for the walks in the audience. You know, that's, that's what we try to get at, statistically, this sort of change in sort of relatively small units of time, sort of before and after suffrage. And that's the effect we see.

Kal Raustiala 34:04

So I'm curious about the policy implications of your argument. You know, one obvious implication is, you know, places that don't have suffrage for women should have it, the world would be better off if that was the case. But that seems to be sort of subsumed by a larger question about democracy. Like it seems like that presumes democracy. And so though, I would, though, I guess, kind of just to detour for a second, I wonder if your argument would also apply to just women having power even if it were in a kind of, you know, authoritarians, electorate kind of model of, of governance. But either way, if we assume, you know, generally your focus is suffrage, voting. Democracy isn't necessary first condition. So are your policy prescriptions, just more democracy is good, and then, you know, obviously, you want women to be a part of that, but it seems like in in the 21st century, I guess I'm not going to say for sure that there are no examples of democracies that lack female suffrage. But it seems like that's pretty well established now. So are your prescriptions any different than just democracy? Promotion is something that, that we maybe should be doing? Or we want more democracy?

Rob Trager 35:19

Yeah, exactly. And the first part of your question was?

Kal Raustiala 35:24

Just what I did not ask this question very well, but

Rob Trager 35:27

You did that, it was a two parter.

Kal Raustiala 35:30

Two Parter. I'll back up and just say, what are your policy prescriptions? And do they differ in any way from the ones that people who are fans of democracy might propose? In other words, is there really any daylight between you and like, Larry Diamond, or I don't know, anyone who's generally been a proponent of spreading democracy, for whatever reason, peace domestically, internationally, etc.

Rob Trager 35:54

Yeah, so I think there are some differences. So. So one of the things, for instance, that we you're right, first of all, that, that, at least in name, women's suffrage is pretty much all over the place. now. But but in name is not exactly the same thing as as in fact, and, and our argument is that you in order to have the popular voice matter, you need good democratic institutions. And, and so and so, you know, in many places, even though there is a certain sort of democracy, that doesn't mean, we think that women's voices can can really be heard, in some cases, it may mean that no one's voices can really be heard. But in many cases, there seems to be a different there is for sure, a difference between between the sexes. And I'll tell you one place since you were asking about policy, one place where I think you you really see this is in sort of post war kind of reconstruction efforts. And so for instance, Iraq would be an example, or Afghanistan would be a really good example. In Iraq, it was actually quite stark, where there's, there's some bargaining in order to constitute a democracy, and the US is heavily involved. And there's a point at which they basically choose to compromise on women's rights, because they feel that they, you know, that they can't get everything that they want. And so they just decide, that's what we're going to give up. We're gonna give up a little bit on women's rights, because we think that the society won't accept it. And, you know, it's more important to have these institutions of democracy. Well, you know, I think we're saying that if you give up on some of these things that really protect women's ability to have a voice in society, then, in fact, you don't have all the benefits of democracy that that you think you're going to have, in particular, the benefits of bringing about peace? And I guess, you know, it's sort of it cheap to pick the example of Iraq, but things haven't gone so well. So, and Afghanistan is similar, actually, there's all sorts of aspects of voting in in Afghanistan, including the way that people are identified when they go to the polls that actually make it hard for women to go to the polls and, and to vote something that's different from what people want them. Others may want them to vote. And and actually, you know, actually your question. Now remembering a little bit the first part of your question. Because there is another, I think, just really interesting aspect of this that makes voting this different thing from broader influence of women in society. And, and that is that the the privacy of the voting booth is actually it's something that I think we do take for granted. But it is quite extraordinary. Because you go into this little place. Well, it used to be a voting not always, but it's, there's a privacy to it, and you get to make a decision that nobody else is supposed to see. And so you're not, you're not in other areas of society. You know, when I was talking about women leaders, for instance, you're also representing yourself to society in some way, and that is very constraining, but in a voting booth, you're not doing that. You're just voting yourself and it doesn't require no, I think it's on a Efronte, the Neapolitan novelist said at some point that the that women need a form of power, that doesn't require the sanction of male dominated structures of power. And I think, actually, I don't think she had voting in mind when she said that. But I think voting actually satisfies that more than really any other example, the exercise of power, maybe in the world today.

Kal Raustiala 40:35

Really interesting. Well, I actually have a lot more questions, but or many more questions, but I'm going to go to ones from the audience, because we have quite a few. And we only have a little bit of time left. So so for the first question, is this honor culture among the public you mentioned in the 19th century, still present day? And how does it manifest in modern day conflicts among men and women?

Rob Trager 40:59

Oh, I'm so glad you asked that question. So, yeah, I mean, I wonder if that was my colleague, Barry O'Neill asking the question, because I, because he's

Kal Raustiala 41:09

Not Barry, but Barry is, of course, the honor expert. And I'll just note his paper, of course, also talks quite a bit about this.

Rob Trager 41:15

Yeah. That? Yeah he does. So I think honor, I mean, absolutely, we, you know, we sometimes it goes by different names today. But but honor still certainly persists, it may persist. If it persists, I'm sure that in a refracted form, I mean, we don't have the culture of dueling in the same way that we used to so. So things have changed. But, but, but some of the language that's used in, in international politics is I think, either code for or really just is kind of about things like reputation, which is very close to honor. And actually, we tried to parse out using experiments, very carefully crafted experiments that others had done, and we re analyzed, we tried to parse out the different ways that men and women kind of process reputation in international politics. And so you may know that there's this idea about audience costs, that people don't like it, when their politicians say make a threat, and then go back down from that threat and don't follow through, they get really upset at those politicians. So that's true. But it turns out, there's a really big difference in why men and women get upset. And men are upset. Men are the ones who are really clearly upset. You know, obviously, talking about averages here, but huge majorities of men are are essentially upset at the inconsistency. Right? Saying one thing and not following through. Women, it's, it's, it's very different. Women, it looks like they're upset, in many cases, because of the threat in the first place, much more than the inconsistency of not following through on the threat. So

Kal Raustiala 43:24

So, wait a second. Does that mean that women are happy? If, again, on average?

Rob Trager 43:31

No, no, no, no, you know, we

Kal Raustiala 43:32

If you thought the threat was about idea, then you would seem to be happy if it's not actually acted upon. But that's not the case.

Rob Trager 43:40

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So so.

Kal Raustiala 43:46

Like Obama and the red line, you know, that whole incident in the Middle East? There's many examples in recent American history of this problem.

Rob Trager 43:54

Yeah, so so. So actually, the way it sort of works is that women are, on average, will tend to be happier with the sort of threat never haven't been made than men were. And they're not as upset as men about the being at the where the threat was made, and people back down. But where that nets out, is that the audience costs, which is the difference between how they feel about the place where the threat was never made, and the place where they where they back down, is actually larger for women. But it's not larger because they're more upset at the back download. It's larger, because they're happier at the stay out. Yeah, so so that's one thing that we found and we also found that women were more willing to accept compromises that looked a little bit less favorable in international politics divisions of something that's being negotiating that look a little bit less favorable. So now I've been talking for so long I, I hope I've answered the question.

Kal Raustiala 45:08

I think you did. I mean, one, I'll just make an amendment. The question was about honor culture, and definitely yeah, you sort of slid into, I mean, relating to the question manifest. Yeah. Men and women. One thing that we didn't talk about, which I guess I don't know, directly relates to honor or reputation, though I could see some linkages is risk taking. And we know, in many studies, that men are bigger risk takers, in all sorts of ways. And so and that actually explains a lot of things about gender differences as they're manifested in society. The ultimate reason for that, I guess we'll put aside for the, for the moment that there's a few questions about that, which we'll get to. But I'm just curious, does risk does does risk acceptance risk aversion sort of fit into the story? As you see it?

Rob Trager 46:01

Risk acceptance or risk aversion? Yeah, that's, that's fascinating. I mean, I think I think that, you know, it probably does, I don't think we really have the data to parse that out. But I think that's a fascinating thing for for people out there who are looking for, for something to think about that that is exactly a direction to go. And, and there is a lot of, as you say, there are a lot of studies, in exactly this sort of thing. And and it's not just it's not just men who are a little bit more risk loving, I think in, in in these studies than women, it's also white men, who were more risk loving than people of color. So

Kal Raustiala 46:50

We're getting down to the fact of if you have power and resources in society, you're more likely to risk them.

Rob Trager 46:57

That's my point. Exactly. The point I was making that, that that I don't think we we always know whether these are effects of biology or effects of some class of people that have different experiences from another class of people. But yeah, I think I think all these things are absolutely possibilities that sort of could be explaining some of these political phenomena. You know, another thing that we see is there are men and women have get angry, it seems like about the same amount. That doesn't seem to be a difference. But then there's some things that inhibit the way that anger is manifested, including fear based reactions, and women seem to have more on on that side. On the inhibiting so I think exactly what the underlying psycho psychological mechanisms are, is obviously fascinating. I don't think we we know exactly.

Kal Raustiala 47:56

Great, so good segway to the next question, which you addressed a little bit, but obviously, it's, it's crucial to so much of what you're talking about in the book. And the question is, how much do you think this is a biological factor, or a factor of how women are socialized in various societies around the world? Now, I'm gonna guess that for the phenomenon, you know, for its policy implications for its finding, may not really matter. But it's certainly quite interesting. And I could see it mattering for some, like subsidiary questions. So what do you yeah, how do you approach that? And how do you this is, you know, this is a very, yeah, this can be a very controversial issue to wade into.

Rob Trager 48:32

Yeah. Yeah. It's such a broad topic. And I find it really fascinating. And I, as I said in the talk, I don't think that we can answer it. And there are really subtle reasons why it's, it's, it's hard to, to, to answer it. But, yeah, but I think we can we can sort of, you know, we can get some leverage from animal studies. Actually, first, let me say, Why is it so controversial? I mean, I think that in and of itself is absolutely fascinating. Why is it so controversial? One of the reasons is that there really has been this sort of struggle that was carried on, I think, in cultural anthropology is a kind of primary site for it, but it has existed across society to to really define humanity as one undivided thing, as something that that doesn't doesn't really have fundamental separate groupings. And, and so, you know, for obvious reasons, people were throwing out some of the ridiculous racialized theories. And when they were doing that, they were arguing that the things that the differences that had been assigned to fundamental, more fundamental things like race, were actually about culture. That was the essence of of that fight that, you know, Zora Hurston and Margaret Mead, and you know, all these folks were were sort of engaged in. And and so I think that's part of the reason why it's so controversial to say, well wait a minute, maybe there are some underlying biological things that that we should pay pay attention to. But we have this strange exceptionalism when we talk about human beings. Because we have no trouble talking about the same thing in the animal kingdom, where we can do experiments where we have more data, and where we actually think that the mechanisms that relate to aggression are pretty similar. In many cases, even if the triggers for those things are, are different. I mean, this topic is, so it's such a fascinating one, I'm just I'll just say that someone who's interested in it, one of the really fascinating literature's centers around someone called Catherine Duloc, who is just a fascinating biologist at Harvard. And, and, and so she has looked at whether there are differences in brain architecture, which people thought that there would be between men and women, or male mice and female mice, because there are these spikes during development of different hormones that spike differentially for men and women. So people really thought that that was going to mean there were fundamental differences in architecture, but it turns out there aren't. It turns out that when it comes to when it comes to, to mice, she can make male mice be pacific in occasions when they would be like murdering the babies have a female mouse that they come across. And she can make female mice be violent in the same way that male mice normally would be. So she can go in both directions. And and the way that she does that is actually just through gene expression. So, so the underlying biology is, is the same. The biology of aggression is is there, and it's the same for both. You know, this is, of course, these are mice studies, but it's, you know, the, it's the same for mice. And it probably there's, you know, it's telling about about humans too. I mean, we should be careful, of course, about generalizing from mice to humans, but but it probably tells us a lot. And, and so, so really, no, that's another reason why we know that biological determinism isn't right, because gene expression is determined by environmental factors also. But on the other hand, there are these gender differences in what genes are being expressed, even if the underlying biology is the same and is present in both genders. So yeah, I don't think we can answer the question. But I think we should take the biological argument seriously, even if it seems a little bit scary to do so.

Kal Raustiala 53:34

Great. So I think we have time for one final question. And here it is. Is there any correlation between participation of women in all decision making positions in business versus peace and security? So in other words, are there connections between what you find in your chosen topic of peace to other settings, where you may have CEOs or others who are female, kind of the leader version of your argument is quite different than the voting version of your argument. So just how does that map on?

Rob Trager 54:09

Yeah, well, so I'm not an expert in the business literature. But I do see some parallels, which really involve the sort of signaling. There's a literature on the signaling that women and business have to do and how complex that is, and sort of the multi-vocality of it, where, you know, they have to signal sort of toughness at the same time as they're signaling femininity, and probably nine other things too. And so I think, you know, being a leader in our society has a set of connotations that tend to be stereotypically male traits. And so what does that mean when a woman goes into office and you know, becomes a becomes a leader? Does that mean that she has to embody those in some way, but she can't exactly just embody those because that somehow doesn't work societally. So, you know, these are things that are very difficult issues that you really see political leaders wrestling with, and, and I hear about in the business world a lot. But the political leaders to me are, are so fascinating. You know, so many women leaders have characterized themselves in male male terms or outside of gender hierarchies. You know, Indira Gandhi, for instance, called herself a bi form human being neither man nor woman, even though she so much seemed to conform to gender stereotypes in her personal life.

Kal Raustiala 55:43

And one of the things that really jumped out in your book that was so interesting, just just like a little aside, but you you discuss some studies about tone and pitch of voice in members of Congress, and that women in Congress have, on average, much lower voices than American women generally. Yes, that was super fascinating. I mean, conversely, male members of Congress have higher pitch than average. So, you know, they kind of meet in the middle. But it was just striking in the ways that whether that's deliberate or we're selecting on those people for that reason. Yeah. Obviously, that's maybe hard to disentangle. But I thought that was a really fascinating example of what you just talked about.

Rob Trager 56:28

Yeah, absolutely. Pitch is such a fascinating thing, because it's both something that is you sort of born with to a degree, but also you can affect as, for instance, Margaret Thatcher very famously did when she met Laurence Olivier of all people, and he gave her advice on what voice coach to go to, and it seems, I mean, at least some anecdotes are to be believed to have really transformed her political career from, you know, these very gendered and sexist things that people were saying about her shrill housewife, and so on to to this extremely commanding leader. And, and it seems like some of that had to do with transforming her own pitch. So it's both something that you're born with and something that you have influence over. So I do think it's possible that leaders are, are playing to the crowd. We don't know exactly.

Kal Raustiala 57:21

Right. Of course, in business, Elizabeth Holmes would be the kind of paradox. Ways that was clearly, you know, aimed at somehow making her seem more with more gravitas than maybe she deserved. Anyway, super fascinating book. Thank you so much for coming on and talking about it. And we look forward to having you back at at UCLA, maybe next year.

Rob Trager 57:46

Thanks so much, Kal, thanks, everybody out there in the ether. It was really a pleasure to come in and chat about the book.

Kal Raustiala 57:54

Take care. Bye, everyone. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai