Women in Modern Terrorism

Recent events, including the rise of the Islamic State and its overt recruitment of Western women has once again brought the issue of women participating in terrorist organizations to the fore. Yet much remains to understand about why women join terrorist organizations and why groups choose to incorporate them into their structures and operations. This text, which draws from a unique dataset compiled over a decade, tackles these questions and analyzes women's inclusion in terrorist organizations since the beginning of modern terrorism, covering both religious and ethno-nationalist-motivated terrorism and conflict. The text opens with a discussion of the definition of terrorism before examining key issues, such as the role of women in terrorism, what women's inclusion in terrorist organizations reveal about the nature and longevity of the group and the conflict, the future of women's role in terrorist organizations and attacks (particularly given the rise of new terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq), and the types of attacks women perpetrate and how they compare across groups. By looking at representative case studies, including Hizballah, Chechnya, Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shaabab, and more, the text shows that women's inclusion in various terrorist organizations is largely a pragmatic choice by groups. It also highlights the cross-pollination of ideas between differently motivated groups. Fundamentally, individuals make up terrorist organizations and in many instances it is individuals who commit the majority of terrorist acts. Therefore understanding the individual motivations and radicalization processes is crucial to understanding terrorism. All these issues along with the role of the media and the internet in radicalization and recruitment processes are explored to provide an exhaustive account of the many facets of women's role in terrorist groups today.