Finding the Invisible Women: Gender Stereotypes versus Student Interest in Foreign Policy and Security Subfields

Abstract

Foreign policy and security studies typically are considered male-dominated domains in the discipline of international relations (IR), yet many women work in these policy domains, particularly in the United States. The "invisible women" working in foreign policy often come from fi elds such as IR, in which gender stereotypes may infl uence their understanding of the careers available to them. This research project seeks to understand student assumptions about gender roles in IR and the eff ects of those assumptions. Survey data collected from students in IR courses in 2011 and 2012 reveal that stereotyping of IR subfi elds is common but that individual students' academic and career interests often diverge from those stereotypes. This fi nding is relevant not simply because it may explain the presence of women in foreign-policy careers but also because it provides useful pedagogical information for instructors in the IR fi eld. I n 2000, I began work in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a nonproliferation analyst. 1 I encountered women of varying ranks and skill levels at every stage of my recruitment, training, and career trajectory. My recruiter was a woman. I interviewed twice at headquarters, both times with female team chiefs. I was placed on a team of 20-plus analysts, evenly composed of men and women. My fi rst mentor was a 65-year-old female veteran of the Clandestine Service turned analyst. My colleagues throughout the Nonproliferation Center were in teams that also were distributed evenly between male and female analysts. Although the majority of workers in support roles were women, there also was a large proportion of women in the analytical ranks, working on interagency committees, writing items for the President's Daily Brief, and serving as managers. The highest ranks had few women, but even this was questioned in 2000 when Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet selected Jami Miscik, a career CIA offi cer and economic analyst, to serve as Associate Deputy Director of Intelligence. 2 Individuals with experience in the US intelligence community may be forgiven if they view my experience as commonplace and perhaps unworthy of retelling. However, as is becoming increasingly clear in popular journals such as Foreign Policy and The Atlantic , the roles played by women in American foreign policy are far from apparent to the academic community or American society in general. 3 Because employment data at the CIA are classifi ed, it is diffi cult to obtain offi cial numbers of women and men employed at the agency. Likewise, few women make it "to the top" of the national security apparatus, and individual agencies seldom send their female analysts on the Sunday talk-show circuit. As Hasler ( 2013 ) stated, women in intelligence are largely "invisible"; moreover, the "women are tired of being invisible."Students demonstrate a similar ignorance of these invisible women. In conversations with them, my coauthor and I found a common tendency to assign genders to IR subfi elds such as security ...