ABSTRACT
The ways in which gender and terrorism interrelate and intersect have long been overlooked and underestimated (Cunningham, 2003; Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015; Henshaw, 2016). Whilst in the last 20 years in particular, a substantial body of literature on women and terrorism in various parts of the world has developed, comprehensive studies that focus on gender – rather than women – remain rare (Kimmel, 2018). The topic of gender, terrorism and deradicalisation has gained new interest in large parts of the world since the emergence of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS) and the subsequent fall of its self-proclaimed ‘Caliphate’. The unprecedented numbers of women and girls who joined IS in Syria, Iraq and later Libya (Eggert, 2015) caught the attention of many, who were interested in finding out more about women’s motivations to join violent and/or extremist political organisations, the reasons why organisations decide to include women and the wider communal and societal context in which these processes take place. However, the focus often remained on women and terrorism, rather than extending to a wider focus on the role gender plays more generally in terrorism.
