The Role of Women in Peace-Building Essay -- international peace, human

In the undeniable patriarchy of the modern world it could be argued that with an increase in female participation in positions of power and influence there would inherently be an increase in world peace. This statement is multifaceted and riddled with a huge lack of empirical data due to only 20% of the world’s political leaders being female. Though with limited data, it can be seen that gender plays no real influence on how a leader will lead a state, and therefor has no play on whether a leader will be more peaceful. This essay intends to argue this idea through; the prevalence in the inevitability of states and war, the fact that there is already a continuing exponential decrease in war and violence in the world unrelated to gender and the idea that sex does not genetically instill in us personality traits. War is an inevitability of human nature and international peace does not relate to the gender of the leaders of the world. Women in power will still act within the states best interest and are not confined to the preconception that women have an â€Å"affinity for peace† . Realist theory suggests that the international system is anarchic and an attempt to obtain or even promote world peace would be an act in futility. In an international system with no global hegemon, states are free to act within the states best interest driven by the demand for power and state survival . From Cleopatra and her funding of the roman military campaigns to Helen Clark providing troops for the war in Afghanistan, globally, female leaders have played some part in the disharmony of the world. In April 1982, under the hand of Margaret Thatcher, Britain was lead to war with Argentina to defend British sovereignty. After 10 weeks and almost 100... ...l Leadership Inspire,† â€Å"Stanford Presidential Lectures: Mary Robinson.† Stanford Presidential Lectures in the Humanities and Arts, Accessed 13 May, 2012, http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/robinson/ Coy, Peter, Elizabeth Dwoskin. "Shortchanged: Why Women Get Paid Less Than Men." Bloomberg Business Week (2012): Accessed May 15, 2014. Eliot Smith, Jeffry Simpson, â€Å"When sex goes wrong.† Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106, No. 5 2012 Pinker Steven, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (London: Penguin Group, 2011), 23 Charlotte Hooper, Manly States: Masculinities Relations, and, International Gender Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Report (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014) Saunders Malcolm, Are women more peaceful than men? (Armidale: Routledge, 2002)