Women and the Unseen Costs of War

   

In Three Guineas (1938), famed author Virginia Woolf writes, “[T]o fight has always been the man’s habit, not the woman’s…Scarcely a human being in the course of history has fallen to a woman’s rifle.” (Woolf 1938: 13).

Without a doubt, fighting wars has historically been a “man’s business.” How do we begin to measure the full cost of this “business”? Discussions of the cost of war almost always include considerations of causalities. Men are far more likely to die in combat-related deaths than their female counterparts. Since 1800, more than 37 million people, mostly men, died from direct participation in conflict.

The financial burden of conflicts is also commonly discussed as a cost of war. The strain war places on economies; how resources are reallocated, deployed, and destroyed; and how the monetary costs of war are paid (or not) is well-studied in economics and elsewhere.

Discussions of other costs exist but are less common. When discussing the psychological or other non-lethal injuries from war and conflict, much literature and popular discourse focuses on the 37 million casualties, things like combat-related “post-traumatic stress disorder” (PTSD) and the struggles faced by veterans with reintegration into society. There is substantial economic literature—though by no means a consensus—on whether military service enhances or diminishes a veteran’s civilian labor market outcomes.

These topics are undoubtedly important. However, the largely exclusive focus of economists on fiscal impacts and military casualties as the “costs” of war means we have critical omissions in our understanding of the consequences of conflict.

Simply put, the economic literature on war largely ignores women. It fails to understand how women may relate to or experience effects of conflict differently than men.

These omissions are not trivial. While the 37 million combat-related deaths is an eye-popping figure, this number is less than half of the 73 million who died of disease or hunger related to war over the same period. The United Nations estimates that women accounted for 40 percent of all conflict-related deaths in 2022.  If we add to that the untold number of individuals who suffered physical, fiscal, or other damage because of conflict, we quickly realize that our literature assessing the costs of war comes up woefully short.

These underappreciated costs are necessary to examine if we want to understand the full costs of war and conflict. Below, I offer but three areas ripe for study at the intersection of women and war. I highlight what we know, what we don’t, and offer suggestions on what questions might prove fruitful for study through various economic lenses, including public choice and political economy.

Women are often portrayed as passive non-combatants in conflict. Alternatively, if women are discussed as contributing to war efforts, discussions largely focus on women in auxiliary roles or how women navigate the “home front” in war time. But women have, and do, play active roles in war as members of formal militaries and other fighting forces.

Though there are examples of women leading formal militaries or serving in formal combat roles throughout history, the first wide-scale integration of women into combat roles came with the Soviet Union in World War II, in which Soviet women served as machine gunners, pilots, snipers, and tank operators. Israeli women first saw combat roles in 1948.[1] Canadian women could serve as combatants in 1989, and more countries have followed since. The United States opened all combat roles to women only within the last decade.

Women’s direct participation in war and the consequences of their participation is understudied. Some literature suggests that women’s direct involvement in war leads to political enfranchisement, including voting rights for women. While it is often suggested that women’s participation in combat specifically, and war more broadly, may challenge traditional gender norms, literature suggests that war may reinforce these norms as well.

To this author’s knowledge, there is no theory of why or when a country’s political leaders decide to allow women in combat. No public choice or political economy analyses exist. There remains significant debate about the efficacy of integrated combat units in contemporary warfare. All these questions are appropriate for economic analysis, but have yet to be fully understood.

The literature is similarly light when discussing women in alternative combat roles (e.g., as guerillas, revolutionary forces, etc.). Though literature does exist, it comes almost exclusively from history, gender studies, and political science. Though women have participated in guerilla movements across time and geography (e.g., FARC in Colombia, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the Viet Cong and Viet Minh in Vietnam, partisans in Yugoslavia, etc.), there is little to no economic analysis about these women and their impacts from micro or macroeconomic perspectives.

In both these cases—women in formal militaries and other fighting groups—questions of opportunity costs and long-term implications of participation are absent. What are the relevant tradeoffs facing women in joining militaries or guerilla groups? Do former female combatants experience wage benefits, penalties, or other meaningful differences in labor markets post-conflict? In addition, there is little work on potential gender-based differences in “disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration” (DDR) programs. Though these programs have seen extensive study, these programs are modeled around male fighters and historically male occupations, leaving ample room for analyses of access, efficacy and outcomes for women.

The use of rape and other forms of sexual violence in war is well-known and discussed in both historical and contemporary discourse (e.g., “comfort women,” the rape of an estimated two million German women by Soviet forces, Bosnian rape camps, etc.). Despite the attention, the “best” data on gender-based sexual violence (GBSV) is still poor. It remains unclear when, where, or what type of GBSV is likely to be used in war. Though some have tackled the question of when GBSV will be used as a broader military strategy, there is shockingly little work.

Those looking to study GBSV from a perspective of economics or political economy may pursue multiple veins of inquiry. Under what institutional conditions is GBSV likely to occur? Are there meaningful similarities or differences when GBSV is perpetrated by foreign militaries, local militaries, or guerilla groups? Are there specific institutional or other mechanisms that have prevented such actions or lessened the frequency?

In addition to these questions, there is a gap in our understanding of the health effects of GBSV and the long-term economic consequences. We do not know how GBSV in war impacts long-term labor market outcomes. We similarly don’t know the implications for the children of such victims. Are children born out of wartime rape, for example, more likely to face economic or educational barriers? What role does stigma play in these outcomes?

There is further work to be done on GBSV in the aftermath of war, in refugee camps or among displaced populations. Though much of the literature on GBSV focuses on rape, forced marriage, re-marriage, and sex trafficking are similarly relevant and less studied.

Outside of conflict directly, GBSV within militaries and other armed groups—even in peacetime—provides another potential path for research. Questions about rates of GBSV, when such violence is likely to occur, and what institutional or other mechanisms may support or thwart such violence are under-researched and poorly understood but are relevant points of economic inquiry.

If economists have studied the effects of war on women, it’s most likely an analysis of economic impacts. It is well-established, for example, that male labor shortages in war increase female labor force participation in wartime. Studies exist on war’s impact on wages as well as the longer term effects on women’s labor force participation. But these studies are by far from complete. Though some women may join the labor force, the physical destruction that comes with war simultaneously destroys or disrupts many formal labor markets in conflict zones, pushing women into informal employment or employment in black markets. Analyses of these informal or black labor markets are infrequently analyzed with any sort of attention paid to gender.

In a similar way, while we know that displacement because of war has negative long-run consequences, we do not have a clear understanding of how these effects impact women versus men. While refugee resettlement is discussed with some frequency, we know very little about how the gender composition of migrant groups impacts host countries or their economies. Likewise, we do not have a clear understanding of if or how large refugee movements impact gender roles, labor force participation, or other household dynamics within a refugee population.

Literary gaps in the economic literature studying the intersection of women and war are understandable. Data is difficult to find. Even “good” data related to things like military casualties, arms transfers, or military expenditures, are often insufficient for statistical analysis—placing these topics well outside the comfort zones of many economists and our standard modeling techniques. As a result, many may view the questions raised above as falling outside the scope of economic analysis. But this is not the case. Economics is fundamentally about how people make choices, respond to incentives, and how institutions—formal and informal rules—shape behavior.

Economic analysis in these instances is necessary for gaining a fuller understanding of complex phenomena. But we must be open to considering alternative methodological approaches. Analytical narratives or other empirical approaches are key to bringing the economic way of thinking into conversations about these topics. These alternative methods are not only viable, but essential.

War may be a “men’s business,” but women pay a major part of the bill. We owe it to the women of the world to figure out just how much of the tab they cover.

[1] Following the war, women were largely excluded from combat roles until the 2000s.