0240.1	Assessment
Research Question (Clear, unambiguous)	"Whether female political leaders can decrease political conflict/political violence?"  The question is certainly of wide interest, although it may be so broad that it is difficult to know what it means.
Relevant Literature	Reference to two literatures of interest seems reasonable.
Causal Interpretations (clear, all parts defined, mechanisms, controls, plausible)	The two mentioned causal ideas - (1) stereotypes of women affect others behavior, (2) women gain leadership under special conditions - are good, although they leave room for quite a few more.  In particular, we would want to consider that the women achieving leadership positions are far from ordinary women, and that people who become national leaders have limited autonomy (raising also the additional question whether women leaders have less autonomy than male leaders, particularly under conditions of potential violent conflict).
Data (variables, sample, comparison)	The two mentioned data sets are good choices for looking at the overall patterns of leadership gender and incidence of armed conflict.  Putting them together may be a challenge, potentially increased by a need for coding that shows the burden of armed conflict before, during, and after leaders - male vs. female - have held power.  However, an additional issue is that it is possible that these data might be ineffective for answering the main questions, because the limited history of female leaders might limit what we can find with this kind of data.
Research Value	Project description omits this.
Overall	The topic is interesting and the research plan is plausible.  Realistically, from what we know about gender, we probably would not expect general differences in the actions of female and male leaders.  However, the expectations of them, the circumstances in which they gain leadership, and the experiences they have getting to leadership are likely to distinguish female and male leaders, so that their actions may look a bit different under some conditions.  Still, the reasonable expectation is that variations in the actions of leaders will vary far more as a result of their political allegiances and circumstances than any effects of sex differences.