What difference does gender make to foreign diplomacy? What do we know about women's participation as decision-makers in international affairs? Is it fair to assume, as many observers do, that female elites will mirror the relatively pacifist preferences of women in the general public as well as the claims of progressive feminist movements? And, of particular importance to this book, what consequences follow from the appointment of "firsts" to these posts? Inspired by recent work in the field of feminist diplomatic history, this book offers the first comparative examination of women's presence in senior national security positions in the United States executive branch.

Sylvia Bashevkin looks at four high-profile appointees in the United States since 1980: Jeane Kirkpatrick during the Reagan years, Madeleine Albright in the Clinton era, Condoleezza Rice during the George W. Bush presidency, and Hillary Rodham Clinton in the first Obama mandate. Bashevkin explores the extent to which each of these women was able to fully participate in a domain long dominated by men, focusing in particular on the extent to which each shaped foreign policy in meaningful ways. She looks particularly at two specific phenomena: first, the influence of female decision-makers, notably their ability to make measurable difference to the understanding and practice of national security policy; and second, leaders' actions with respect to matters of war and women's rights. The track records of these four women reveal not just a consistent willingness to pursue muscular, aggressive approaches to international relations, but also widely divergent views about feminism. Women as Foreign Policy Leaders shows how Kirkpatrick, Albright, Rice, and Clinton staked out their presence on the international scene and provided a crucial antidote to the silencing of women's voices in global politics.

Sylvia B. Bashevkin is a professor in the Department of Political Science and director of the Canadian Studies Programme at the University of Toronto. She specializes in the areas of women and politics, public policy, and comparative politics.

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"Expanding upon the works of feminist historians, Bashevkin's aim to provide a feminist analysis of some of these women's defeminization (or masculinization as Bashevkin would characterize it) of themselves and their agendas as national security leaders is laudable. Indeed, little scholarship has produced such a detailed account of top women's leadership, especially their adoption of a masculine repertoire in an extremely masculine space."

--Shan-Jan Sarah Liu, University of Edinburgh, Politics and Gender

"Sylvia Bashevkin's analysis of four US women decision-makers since 1980 busts three major myths: that women leaders resemble the female electorate in their foreign policy preferences, that they're doves on defense compared with male leaders, and that executive government is the most significant socializing influence on their leadership. Her study is timely given the rise of women in foreign policy leadership across states around the world. It opens the door to a whole new field of comparative research examining the difference that gender and leadership make to foreign policy. Scholars and students of international relations in every country should take heed."

--Jacqui True, Professor of Politics and International Relations, Monash University

"There has been a great dearth of work on women in foreign policy for almost twenty years, and thus there is a crying need to take up that issue once more. Rescuing a robust description of the influence and efforts of four impressive female US foreign policy leaders is an incalculable contribution. This book is theoretically informative, suggesting that many of our assumptions about women and foreign policy leadership are misleading. It is a stellar contribution on several levels."

--Valerie Hudson, Director of the Program on Women, Peace, and Security, The Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas AandM University

"In Women as Foreign Policy Leaders, Sylvia Bashevkin centers the four women who have held the most senior foreign policy posts in US administrations to date: Jeane Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton. Bashevkin offers not only detailed accounts of what the women did in office, but also explores how scholars might judge these four women. This book should be read across political science and IR, feminist and non-feminist to empirical and theoretical scholars: Bashevkin's book is rich in detail and engagingly so, but it is also conceptually sharp, provoking scholars to rethink how we study gender, foreign policy, leadership, and representation."

--Sarah Childs, Professor of Politics and Gender, Birkbeck, University of London

"The difference between historians and political scientists is that historians tell the story and draw conclusions; political scientists often over theorize. Bashevkin (Toronto) has produced a very interesting comparative study of four women who held senior foreign policy posts during the last three decades-Jeane Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, and Hillary Clinton. Her conclusions are hardly shocking. Women leaders are not monolithic; they reflect different experiences, points of view, ideologies, and decision-making styles, which may or may not mirror the larger female electorate. The four women did not act differently from men in terms of the employment of military power. Each had varying emphasis on how important feminist issues were in their policy recommendations. The profiles and comparative analysis are interesting and useful. "

--J. P. Dunn, Converse College

"The biographical information on family, education and entry in politics of each of the women leaders are presented by Bashevkin with great sensitivity, empathy and sorority. Beyond the opinion that their ideas and decisions on foreign policy deserve [...], the reader cannot but sympathize with all four when he is presented with the details of their trajectories, each of them marked by effort, merit and resilience, qualities without which they could not have managed to stand out in the masculinist and elitist environment of foreign policy."

--Monica Salomon, Revista Estudos Feministas, Florianópolis