Alexis C. Madrigal at
The Atlantic writes that
When it comes to drones, men are from Mars and women are from some other planet not named after the Roman God of perpetual war:
Pew's out with an international poll that shows, across countries and overall levels of support, a striking gender gap exists on support for American drone strikes.
Women were much less likely to approve of "the United States conducting missile strikes from pilotless aircraft called drones to target extremists in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia."
In Japan, for example, support for drone strikes was 30 percentage points lower than their male counterparts. The smallest gaps—in France, South Korea, and Uganda—were 14, 14, and 13 percentage points, respectively. On average, there was a 22-point gap between male and female support for drone strikes, and it didn't matter if there was considerable overall support for strikes or not.
"Gender gaps are also often seen in global surveys over the use of military force, with women far less likely than men to say that force is sometimes necessary in the pursuit of justice," wrote Bruce Stokes, Director of Global Economic Attitudes at the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project, in introducing the data. "But the gender difference over drone strikes is unusually large."
The most directly comparable poll we could find focused on conflict in the Persian Gulf in the early 90s. Researchers asked whether respondents would support US military action if the embargo in Iraq failed. On average, men supported the option more than women by 7 percentage points. But there was considerably more geographic variation. Women in Ankara (the researchers surveyed by city rather than country) showed more support for the intervention than men there. Musocvites were roughly even, too. The differences were small in Lagos and Rome; largest in Stuttgart (-17), Tokyo (-15), and Mexico City (-15). The drone data, by contrast, shows a much more consistent pattern.
In 2003, Tufts University's Richard C. Eichenberg conducted a meta-analysis of polling on gender differences in the United States related to war. He found that what he called "baseline average foreign policy restraint" differed between men and women by an average of 12 percentage points. That is to say, women were less likely to support military action by an average of 12 percent.
But he also showed that the polling language could create big changes in how much support men and women were willing to give the use of force. […]
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Please answer the same poll question Pew asked internationally below.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Dear Mr. President:
Dear Mr. President: I am writing you today because I am outraged at the notion of involving government in healthcare decisions like they do in other countries. I believe healthcare decisions should be between myself and my doctor.
Well, that is not strictly true. I believe healthcare decisions should be between myself, my doctor, and my insurance company, which provides me a list of which doctors I can see, which specialists I can see, and has a strict policy outlining when I can and can't see those specialists, for what symptoms, and what tests my doctors can or cannot perform for a given set of symptoms. That seems fair, because the insurance company needs to make a profit; they're not in the business of just keeping people alive for free.
Oh, and also my employer. My employer decides what health insurance company and plans will be available to me in the first place. If I quit that job and find another, my heath insurance will be different, and I may or may not be able to see the same doctor as I had been seeing before, or receive the same treatments, or obtain the same medicines. So I believe my healthcare decisions should be between myself, the company I work for, my insurance company, and my doctor. Assuming I'm employed, which is a tough go in the current economy.
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Tweet of the Day:
Happening now on the House floor: Drunk History w/ Steve King
— @traciglee
On today's
Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin's round-up included the "Carlos Danger" name generator, the Amash-Conyers amendment, and how Steve King's racism continues to damage the Republican brand. We puzzled over the backstory of
Laura Clawson's post about the Ohio woman who had all her belongings stolen by a bank that got the wrong address on an eviction. Then, a deep dive into the moving parts of the Amash-Conyers result. Lastly, more discussion of "The Last Days of Big Law" with
Armando, which wandered instead into the universality of the money chase and the MBA-ization of the "learned professions."
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.