GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PERCEPTIONS TOWARDS THE USE OF FORCE

Abstract

The existence of gender differences in public attitudes has long been debated and it is maintained that women and men have different attitudes towards certain policy areas. One of those areas is the use of force in foreign policy. Women are less supportive of the use of force in foreign policy than men. The reasons for these differences have been tried to be explained through the impact of the factors such as partisanship or ideology; economic marginalization; political marginalization; negative responses to war casualties; feminist consciousness; motherhood; socialization; issue salience. While public opinion surveys have been regularly conducted on foreign policy in Turkey, the gender dimension is rather understudied. In this article, I first argue that there are gender differences in public perceptions towards the use of force in Turkey and I aim to explore the reasons for these differences based on two sets of focus group discussions data gathered in 2021 and 2022.