Militarization and Gender Inequality: Exploring the Impact

ABSTRACT Feminist scholars have long argued that militarism and patriarchy are linked. To date, however, the relationship between militarization and gender inequality has not been empirically tested. Using the Gender Inequality Index and the Global Militarization Index for the period of 1990–2017 for 133 countries, we put the spotlight on militarization to show how it reflects and contributes to gender inequality (in terms of health, education, political representation, and labor force participation). Our article shows that higher militarization is significantly correlated with higher gender inequality, controlling for major variables such as the military in politics, the proportion of parliamentary seats held by women, conflict, democracy level, and regime type. Among other results, we find that higher representation of women in parliament correlates with less military spending. The results are significant in the case of Muslim majority countries and MENA countries, and with respect to countries with different income levels.