51吃瓜

While Denmark and other countries in Europe are focused on defense policy, there is scant attention being paid to the gendered dimensions of the Ukraine war. Not only are women disproportionately affected as victims of such a war, women also have been to fight in the war. There is almost a universal aversion across many societies to viewing women as capable of violence due to pervasive gender stereotypes.

From struggles and revolutions for independence during colonization to their role as suicide bombers in terrorism and terrorist groups, women have always participated in conflicts. Women in terrorism captured the attention of the global population from onwards when they were being by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in droves. The figure of the female terrorist presents a conundrum. On the one hand, as one who commits acts of violence, she is a perpetrator of human rights violations against her own gender and others. On the other hand, structural human rights violations increase her vulnerability to radicalization. The female terrorist then seems to be caught between these two positions, where both law and politics are struggling to accommodate such a figure within their ambits.

The problem lies in the fact that women typically have been viewed from the of being victims rather than having political agency. Accounts of men鈥檚 violence and terrorism typically are seen as rational and male terrorists are seen as active perpetrators of political violence. In contrast, accounts of women鈥檚 participation in terrorism is characterised as . This sets up a false dichotomy that translates to an understanding of agency that is gendered, with women鈥檚 violence being seen as exceptional.

Women as Victims, Not Perpetrators of Violence

In international law, the women, peace and security () agenda mainly focuses on victims of sexual violence during conflicts. UN Security Council Resolution in WPS has only one with one sentence that mentions female radicalization: 鈥溾��to conduct and gather gender-sensitive research and data collection on the drivers of radicalization for women, and the impacts of counter-terrorism strategies on women鈥檚 human rights and women鈥檚 organizations鈥� (para. 12). This is a fraught area within the WPS Agenda with a confusing wording, where women are presented as both problem and solution in the same sentence. Furthermore, the WPS model falls within heteronormativity鈥攊t is heterosexual and heteropatriarchal. The WPS space needs to be recast as something else which does not carry the cultural baggage of gender stereotypes and of these normative frameworks.

Too many have taken a simplistic view of women鈥檚 violence as a result of personal failures.  Such a recasting is important because the female terrorist is currently presented without any political agency. The model at present is quite simplistic and reductive, reflecting the way in which women鈥檚 violence is generally constructed as resulting from personal failures, lost love and irrational emotionality. Consider the reasons given for women鈥檚 radicalization by the of the European Parliament鈥檚 Committee on Women鈥檚 Rights and Gender Equality: 鈥渁 sense of duty to defend their Muslim brothers and sisters鈥�, 鈥渁 sense of adventure鈥�, 鈥渢he prospect of marriage鈥� (p. 26). These reasons are repeated in several policy reports and papers that have come out over the last few years on this topic. 

The 鈥榩ush鈥� and 鈥榩ull鈥� that are given for women鈥檚 violence are that they are frustrated in their personal lives, have unsatisfactory love lives and are looking for an emotional outlet, while the allure of militancy is that it is an adventure, and that they are rebelling against patriarchal injunctions in their own families. Caron E. Gentry and Laura Sjoberg state in Beyond Mothers, Monsters and Whores that how violent women matter in global politics is typically through 鈥渢he mother, monster and whore narratives which confine them to vengeance, insanity and sexuality and deny the possibility that they could be choosing their actions鈥� (p.20). 

The female terrorist is then always presented as someone鈥檚 wife, partner, mother, daughter, sister. And we keep coming back to the tropes of the public/private when the female terrorist is characterized as such, where the public sphere is seen to be the rational male space, and the private sphere the 鈥榠rrational鈥� and 鈥榚motional鈥� space. Narratives of women and violence then become sensational and stylized, where their private love and sex lives, lack of ideal femininity as well as lack of political agency become construed as the drivers of terrorism and militancy.

This is not to say that all policy reports do this. The UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate鈥檚 鈥淕ender Dimensions of the Response to Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters鈥� acknowledges the need to take a different approach. However, this report is one among the few while a majority of the policy reports thus far rehash the stereotypes.

Women鈥檚 Agency in Violent Extremism

News reports and coverage of such women popularized the term 鈥榡ihadi bride鈥� with regards to women joining ISIS, and several scholars have commented on how problematic this is. The connotation of 鈥渏ihadi bride鈥� is that these women are infantilized as brides and tabloid sensationalism flattens a complicated but necessary debate about political agency.

The flip side to this, however, is that when talking about such women, especially in the context of foreign terrorist fighters where some left to fight in ISIS as young as 15-year-olds, where does one draw the line between vulnerability and agency?  We need to be to the coercion and violence many female members experience themselves.

At the heart of it all is theinability of the broader cultural to conceive that women are capable of being attracted to violence for reasons that are their own. The gendered narratives of women鈥檚 violence ultimately leads to women鈥檚 invisibility in legal and political narratives of terrorism, where ultimately women then can only be seen聽 as victims. Any deviation from this is seen as going down a about what it means to be a woman. This appears to cancel the possibility that women may not always behave in ways that we as a society expect them to, thus giving rise to sensationalized narratives and framing their violence as exceptional.

聽[The author is a聽聽on Advancing the Rights of Women and Girls with聽 who helped publish this article.]

The views expressed in this article are the author鈥檚 own and do not necessarily reflect 51吃瓜鈥檚 editorial policy.