Gender and Violence in International Relations: Evidence from the Statecraft Simulation

Abstract

To what extent does gender impact the level of conflict in an online international relations simulation environment? This article uses a survey of participants in the Statecraft simulation to determine the degree to which gender affects simulation outcomes. The authors worked with the Statecraft company to include a limited number of questions in Statecraft's end-of-simulation survey regarding participants’ gender, the level of conflict in the simulated world in which the student participated, and whether the student's world succeeded in building the Globe of Frost, the analog for solving global warming in the simulation. Based on student responses, we find that classes with a majority of male students were significantly more likely to report that their simulated world had a high level of conflict. Teams with majority males were also more likely to initiate conflict and focus on foreign policy rather than domestic policy, though those results were insignificant. Gender did not appear to affect whether or not a simulated world solved the global warming analog; though not significant, the coefficient suggests male-dominated worlds were slightly more likely to construct the Globe of Frost.