Women in Modern Terrorism: From Liberation Wars to Global Jihad and the Islamic State

by Jessica Davis

Recent events, including the rise of the Islamic State and its overt recruitment of Western women, have once again brought the issue of women participating in terrorist organizations to the forefront. Yet much remains to be understood about why women join terrorist organizations and why groups choose to incorporate them into their structures and operations. Women in Modern Terrorism, 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 terrorism and conflict.

The text opens with a discussion of the definition of terrorism before examining key issues, such as how and why women join terrorist groups, what women’s inclusion in terrorist organizations reveals about the nature and longevity of both the groups and the conflicts, 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 case studies, including Hizballah, Chechnya, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al Shaabab, and more, this text shows that women’s inclusion in various terrorist organizations is largely a pragmatic choice by the group. It also highlights the cross-pollination of ideas between differently motivated groups. 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 roles for women in terrorist groups today.

Genres: Terrorism

192 pages, Hardcover

Published January 30, 2017

About the author

Jessica Davis an international expert on terrorism and illicit financing, is President and Principal Consultant with Insight Threat Intelligence, and is President of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies. She began her career in intelligence analysis with the Canadian Military, then transitioned to a policy role at Global Affairs Canada before becoming a team leader with Canada’s financial intelligence unit, FINTRAC. Jessica’s last role in government was as senior strategic analyst at CSIS responsible for threat financing and managing the Indicators of Mobilization to Violence project. She now works to bring evidence-based solutions to the private and public sectors to counter illicit financing and terrorism. Jessica is a PhD candidate at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University studying counter-terrorist financing and has published extensively in the Globe and Mail, Just Security, Lawfare, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Perspectives on Terrorism, Policy Options, and ICCT. She is most recently the author of Women in Modern Terrorism: From Liberations Wars to Global Terrorism and the Islamic State (2017), and Illicit Money: Financing Terrorism in the 21st Century (forthcoming with Lynne Rienner in 2021). Jessica is an associate fellow with GNET and RUSI’s CFCS and a SSHRC CGS Joseph Armand Bombardier scholar

Reviews

[Nick Moz Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent overview of women in terrorism. However some of he arguments felt incomplete and it felt like a collection of papers rather than one coherant text. It is a very useful reference text.