Valerie Hudson

International affairs professor Valerie Hudson is a U.S. foreign policy analyst and expert in global security and gender whose widely published research shows the fate of nations is tied to the status of women. She developed a nation-by-nation database on women, the WomanStats Database (@WomanStats) ,producing research with co-investigators linking the security of women to the security of states. The database is used by authorities around the world.

Dr. Hudson directs the Program on Women, Peace, and Security at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. She is the recipient of several major teaching and research awards, including an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. She was a Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the Australian University in early 2017 and was named a Distinguished Scholar of Foreign Policy Analysis by the International Studies Association. Foreign Policy named her one of the top 100 Most Influential Global Thinkers in 2009.

She coauthored The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide (Columbia University Press), published in  2020. Previous co-authored books include Bare Branches: Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population, which won two national book awards; Sex and World Peace, which feminist leader Gloria Steinem named as one of the top three books on her reading list; and The Hillary Doctrine: Sex and American Foreign Policy, in 2015.  A key to her analysis is that every dimension of national security is intertwined with whether women are subordinated or empowered within their society. She received her PhD in political science at The Ohio State University.