Explaining Extremism: Western Women in Daesh

Loken, Meredith; Zelenz, Anna

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2769604

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…While the former allow for the macro-structural analysis of female political participation, the latter provide micro-sociological insights into (the staging of) the activists' lives and everyday practices which may then be juxtaposed to the macro-structural traits of engagement. 25 .…”

Section: Capturing Gendered Agency In Scholarshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radical men and sympathizing women? Gendered constructions of agency in charges of terrorism in Germany

Eppert

Roth

2021

New Journal of European Criminal Law

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In the past, scholarly research in extremism and terrorism studies tended to analyse women’s engagement with violent ideology-based groups from a normative angle, framing female commitment to radical ideologies and violence as cases of inherent victimization or as instigated by a dominant male. Particularly in the negotiation of women’s transnational support of terror organizations in Syria, gendered frames of political agency have been reproduced in the institutional practices of the judiciary. Taking the case of Germany and four appeals lodged at the Federal Court of Justice between 2015 and 2017 as examples, this article analyses gendered conceptions of agency in argumentation with respect to criminal liability in the context of extremist engagement in Syria. It identifies, first, the gendered construction of defendants before the courts and inherently gendered assumptions about agency and second, a formal organizational understanding in the terrorism clauses as the two underlying problems and suggests that current concepts in terrorism norms at national, EU und international levels deflect the focus on the wider conflict dynamics where civilians’ support to violence is concerned.

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Section: Capturing Gendered Agency In Scholarshipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radical men and sympathizing women? Gendered constructions of agency in charges of terrorism in Germany

Eppert

Roth

2021

New Journal of European Criminal Law

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“…Because ‘ women are not supposed to be violent’, observers often explain female political violence as aberration, not agency (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007: 2, emphasis in original). This approach relies on stereotypes of violent women as psychologically or sexually defective, driven to near insanity by the loss of male family members, sexually motivated, or actually victims (see Bond et al, 2019; Loken and Zelenz, 2018; Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007). Representations of women’s agency are further ‘disciplined’ by what Åhäll (2012: 103) calls a ‘mythology of motherhood’: womanhood is synonymized with the capacity to give life, and women’s propensity to take life is therefore ‘unnatural’.…”

Section: Making (Maternal) Sense Of Violent Womenmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Both needed and threatened’: Armed mothers in militant visuals

Loken

2020

Security Dialogue

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Because women are assumed to be nonviolent, their participation in militant groups can humanize organizations and legitimize rebellion. But gender beliefs are deeply engrained, and consequently women’s involvement can also generate resistance. This article explores how militants navigate this tension through their political visuals, specifically analyzing images of ‘armed mothers’ across six diverse conflicts. Leveraging life-giving as the ‘natural’ role for women, these images signal violent disruption of everyday life and authorize political violence in response. But they also stress the temporariness of gender-role expansion, promising and preserving a ‘return to normal’. Militant groups contextualize, justify, and humanize violent struggle through these images even in cases where women rarely participate on the front lines.

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Female Radicalization

Gigauri

2022

Global Perspectives on the Psychology of Terrorism

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This chapter discusses the phenomenon of female radicalization based on a case study of the Islamic State. The goal of this chapter is to explore the connection and, possibly, the correlation between the uneven and inconsistent security context and the transformation of gender norms and deeply-rooted gendered segregation inside a jihadist organization through qualitative desk research. Using aspects of securitization theory and a human security paradigm, the research elaborates on the changing politico-military tendencies targeting the Islamic State since the declaration of the War on Terror, the dynamics of changing the strictly domestic role of women inside ISIS, the roles performed by female recruits in the organization, the threat they pose as participants of military jihad, and the propensity of existing counterterrorism measures to ignore the significance of female terrorists. Finally, with proper arguments, the chapter argues that there is a need for implementing a gendered approach to designing case-appropriate counterterrorism strategies.

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Explaining Extremism: Western Women in Daesh

Cited by 3 publications

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Radical men and sympathizing women? Gendered constructions of agency in charges of terrorism in Germany

Radical men and sympathizing women? Gendered constructions of agency in charges of terrorism in Germany

‘Both needed and threatened’: Armed mothers in militant visuals

Female Radicalization

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