http://www.womenundersiegeproject.org/blog/entry/why-everyday-gender-inequality-could-lead-to-our-next-war#.UFM3gpx9gGk.twitter

What if I suggested that reducing the rates of rape and sexism in the U.S. would reduce our risk of international conflict? You might think that American girls and women who regularly adapt their lives to deal with "harmless" street harassment, or who are assaulted by American men, have little to do with, say, the Iraq War. Yet research shows an undeniable relationship between the treatment of women in everyday life and a nation’s propensity for engaging in war.

Such is the conclusion of a fascinating book, Sex and World Peace, based on studies that spanned 10 years. The authors—Valerie M. Hudson, Bonnie Ballif-Spanvill, Mary Caprioli, and Chad F. Emmett—took the question, How does a nation’s security affect the status of its women? and flipped it: Does the status of women affect a nation’s security? Their results are startling in their power and clarity.

According to the authors, the very best indicator and predictor of a state’s peacefulness is not wealth, military expenditures, or religion; the best predictor is how well its girls and women are treated. And before you start making exceptions for the U.S., think about this: Democracies with high levels of violence against women are as insecure and unstable as non-democracies. Whether a country is a democracy or not is irrelevant.

Gender is the fundamental construct for how a society understands difference. Regardless of which state we are talking about, tolerance for street harassment, rape, domestic violence, and restrictions on reproductive freedom are among several indicators of gender inequality rooted in such difference. These behaviors correlate to state security in multiple dimensions. In the simplest terms, states in which women are subjected to violence and uncontested male rule at home, where they are not allowed equal freedoms and rights to bodily integrity, privacy, and equal protection under the law, are those most likely to engage in violence as nations, the authors report. Microaggression against women in private connects to macroaggressive national behavior. The larger a nation’s gender gap in equality between men and women or the more violently patriarchal their structures, the greater the likelihood that a nation will resort to force and violence in the form of aggressive nationalism.

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