18
from the female judges as compared to their male counterparts that need to be more fully explored and
specified within the decision-making model.
30
The results here indicate that the role of gender justice at the ICTY is more complicated than
might appear. Given that no empirical research has examined the role of women as jurists on
international tribunals and given that there are no significant effects for the gender variable no matter how
you measure it, future research needs to disentangle why different studies are reaching opposite results
based on essentially the same data.
31
As a final note, the control variables continue to be significant and
in the appropriate direction (except for plea as noted above). The inclusion of the Jelisic factor made no
difference in the substantive analysis (results not shown).
Gender & Sexual Assault
The above analysis examines gender and sexual assault as two separate effects –judicial gender
and victim status. For purposes of understanding whether there are differences between men and women
in rape cases, we need examine another final set of models. Before we can reach conclusions, we must
first examine cases where women have had the opportunity to rule sexual assault cases and pass
judgments. It is one thing to say that overall the ICTY has been aggressive in enforcing laws prohibiting
sexual violence, but we cannot say that women have been more assertive in sentencing until we interact
the rape variable with the number or presence of females on the panel. After all, the effects of lengthy
sentences on defendants accused of rape may be the result of male judges punishing male defendants
more harshly. In our final model, we interact rape with judicial gender and the results are presented in
Tables 4 and 5.
32
Tables 4 and 5 about here
30
For example, a judge’s background in prosecuting sex crimes, in working with women’s groups, or being
appointed from a country where human rights are given a top priority may all be factors that might lead a judge to be
more assertive about protecting human rights.
31
The 2005 study to be published later this year analyzes data through July 1, 2003 when only 37 trials had been
held. Within only the last eighteen months, the Chambers have issued verdicts in 17 more cases—substantially
increasing the number of verdicts.
32
We had hoped to have separate effects of each and create an additional interaction term for sexual assault and
gender of the judges, but extreme collinearity resulted from that model, so we rely only on the interaction of female
victim status and judicial gender.
Convention