UN’s feminist narrative backfires
The United Nations is marking 25 years this month since its Security Council adopted Resolution 1325, better known as the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda.
The resolution enshrines a now-familiar feminist talking point — that women are “agents of peace” while men are the ones who drive conflict. It calls for elevating women to leadership positions on the premise that they are natural peacemakers.
“The Women, Peace and Security agenda builds on a simple truth backed by evidence: Women’s contributions are essential to bring lasting peace for all of society. When women lead, peace follows,” the UN declared on social media on October 6.
But the data tell a different story.
What the evidence shows
According to multiple studies, female leaders are significantly more likely than male leaders to wage war.
A 2017 study by researchers from the University of Chicago and the College of William & Mary examined wars between 1480 and 1913, mostly in Europe. They found that countries ruled by queens were 27% more likely to enter armed conflict than those ruled by kings.
“We find that queenly reigns engaged more in inter-state wars relative to kingly reigns,” the researchers wrote. “Queens were also more likely to gain territory over the course of their reigns.”
The authors noted that their findings contradict the common belief that women are inherently more peaceful than men. They also dismissed the idea that female rulers fought wars only to project strength early in their reigns; the data showed that queens tended to be more aggressive throughout their rule.
Modern history paints a similar picture. In Why Leaders Fight, researchers analyzed every war from 1875 to 2004 and found that 36% of female leaders initiated at least one military conflict, compared to just 30% of male leaders.
A separate 2011 study from Texas A&M University analyzed gender differences in military aggression — measured by defense spending — across 22 democracies between 1970 and 2000. The results: female heads of state spent about 3% more on defense than men in equivalent positions.
“Women in the executive branch, as either the chief executive or related ministers, oversee greater defense spending and increases in conflict behavior than when men hold the same positions,” the authors concluded.
The evidence, in other words, undermines the UN’s claim that women’s leadership naturally brings peace. In fact, the UN’s own statement on the WPS agenda seemed to admit the opposite — that after 25 years of women being placed in “peacemaking roles,” global conflict has reached its highest level in 80 years.
“In this moment when active conflicts are at the highest levels since 1946, funding for women-led frontline organizations is being gutted and war is reversing gains for women’s equality,” the globalist body said. “Most major conflicts are now being negotiated behind closed doors – in the absence of women.”
Hiding the Evidence to Protect the Feminist Narrative
Even beyond the world stage, data suggest that the idea of women being inherently less violent than men may not hold up.
By 2014, researchers had compiled 270 empirical studies and 73 reviews showing that women are at least as physically aggressive as men in intimate relationships. Among teenagers, girls were found to be nearly twice as physically violent toward boys as boys were toward girls.
But publishing such findings has become taboo. In 1980, when evidence of equality in intimate violence began to surface and threatened the feminist narrative of an “oppressive patriarchy,” the researchers “faced not only criticism but also a barrage of abuse, falsehoods and threats from women's advocates that is now well documented.”
“Currently, findings on all types of female physical and sexual aggression are being suppressed; academics who do publish their research are subjected to bitter attacks and outright vilification from some colleagues and activists, and others note the hostile climate and carefully omit all data on female perpetrators from their published reports,” researcher Kate Fillion wrote in her 1997 book Lip Service: The Myth of Female Virtue in Love, Sex, and Friendship.
