Born or made? Military conscription and sexism

From 1901 through 1995, military conscription in Argentina was mandatory. The length of service was a minimum of one year (the Army and the Air Force) and a maximum of two years (the Navy). Service began with a three-month basic instruction period during which recruits learned military norms and were exposed to combat training. After that, conscripts were allocated to a military unit to perform a specific duty, not necessarily related to military training.

In earlier times, males served in the conscription at the age of 21; later, this was changed to age 18. The cohort born in 1955 was the last cohort starting military service at age 21; the cohort born in 1958 was the first cohort starting serving at age 18. The cohort born in 1976 faced the draft lottery but eventually was not drafted as conscription was halted. Our analysis focuses on cohorts that served at age 18, that is, on cohorts born between 1958 and 1975.

The eligibility of young males for military service was randomly determined, using the last three digits of their national IDs. Each year a lottery assigned a number between 1 and 1,000 to each combination of the last three ID digits. The lottery system was run in a public session administered by the National Lottery. Results were broadcasted over the radio and published in the main newspapers.
After the lottery, individuals were called for physical and mental examinations. Later on, the government announced a cutoff number. Individuals whose ID number had been assigned a lottery number higher than the cutoff number (and who had passed the medical examination) were mandatorily called to military conscription.

2020-04-01

2020-04-30

Physical violence and non-physical abuse

For analyzing sexist behaviors we use scales from published psychology papers. Each behavior outcome relates to a group of statements and each statement has a score that depends on how often the person carries out the behavior. We construct a separate index for each of the 2 outcomes.

Attitudes towards homosexuality, hostile sexism, old-fashioned sexism, traditional gender roles, sexual machismo, justification of sexism and violence.

For analyzing sexist attitudes we use scales from published psychology papers. Each attitude outcome relates to a group of statements and each statement has a score that depends on how much the person agrees or disagrees with the claim. We construct a separate index for each of the 6 outcomes.

Exploiting the random assignment of eligibility into the Argentine military conscription, we aim to identify whether being conscripted affects individuals’ subsequent attitudes and bahaviors towards sexism. To answer this question, we combine administrative data on the draft with data from a purposely-design survey on personality traits and beliefs.
We obtained lottery draft results and cutoff numbers from Galiani, Rossi, and Schargrodsky (2011). Using the lottery draft results and the cutoff numbers by cohort, we can then define the dummy variable Draft Eligible, which equals one for men whose ID is above the cutoff and therefore draft-eligible, and zero otherwise. This Draft Eligible variable identifies the intention-to-treat for the population. We also construct the treatment variable Conscription that takes the value one when an individual actually served in the military (obtained from the survey).

Public lottery

Individuals

No

0

Depends on survey take up

Depends on survey take up and cutoff numbers