"'Boys Like Guns and Girls Care About People': Gender stereotypes versus individual interest in international relations subfields"

Women working in foreign policy have drawn a great deal of attention in the past year, with Anne-Marie Slaughter's assertion that women "can't have it all" and responses that article prompted.  The belief that women are scarce in foreign policy is both widespread and incorrect, as many women work throughout the foreign policy community today.  It could be that the perception of gender roles play a role in this erroneous "common wisdom."  This research agenda seeks to test that hypothesis.  Beginning with students in international relations (IR) courses, we administered surveys to students asking them about their beliefs about gender and the study of various IR subfields.  The survey results indicate the students do, in fact, perceive certain subfields as more appealing to women versus men, but that - counter-intuitively - they do not use these stereotypes to determine their own areas of scholarly and career interest.

If you're interested, Dr. Buhr also recommended a couple of relevant articles on women in foreign policy:

Why Women Still Can't Have It All

You Can Have It All...Once Your Kids Are In College