The think-tank world -- the double-X chromosome part of it, anyway -- is buzzing with Micah Zenko's July 14 piece in Foreign Policy examining statistics and anecdotes that prove, once again, the woeful underrepresentation of women in the U.S. national security policymaking establishment.
Zenko offers two causes -- women's "preference" for "soft" policy issues and women's greater struggles with the balance between work and family. However, these factors are really manifestations of his third answer: Too many powerful men tend to create work environments that privilege men over women. This is an example of that ingrained, deeply human preference for the familiar that we softly refer to as … sexism.
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