Despite recent gains in women’s representation in legislatures across the globe, women remain largely underrepresented in executive posts. When women are appointed to cabinets, moreover, they are largely excluded from traditionally high-prestige and “masculine” portfolios. Yet, in recent years a diverse but growing number of states have appointed women to the ministry of defense—a powerful position typically reserved for male politicians. Countries as varied as Ecuador, Japan, the Netherlands, and Bangladesh have each nominated a woman to this post. When, where, and why do states select female defense ministers? After cataloguing the appointments of female defense ministers across the globe and overtime, we present a new theory of women’s access to these powerful positions: women are likely to be selected as defense ministers when the meaning of this portfolio diverges from our traditional “masculine” conceptions of the post. Specifically, we argue that female defense ministers are likely to be appointed in countries that wish to signal a shift towards more pacifistic foreign policy or in those where the defense portfolio is more commonly used primarily to promote peace rather than war. We test our hypotheses using an original data set of more than 100 countries over a 25-year period.
