Gendering Terror

Auchter, Jessica

doi:10.1080/14616742.2011.619780

Cited by 40 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…139 Others, like Jessica Auchter, question the need to inscribe agency into women's actions as a prerequisite for legitimate participation in politics. 140 Our data makes clear that Daesh women, like most participants in political violence, perform both agentively and otherwise. These recruits are pushed and pulled by external forces of violence, religion, and community.…”

Section: Conclusion and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 78%

Explaining extremism: Western women in Daesh

Loken

Zelenz

2017

Eur j.of int. secur.

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Women participate extensively in armed, Islamist struggle. In recent years, foreign women have travelled from the West to join Daesh. Their participation perplexes policymakers, government officials, and researchers who call attention to the group’s gendered regulation, violence, and widespread use of rape. Consequently, observers often argue that women are deceived by the organisation or seduced by the promise of romance. This suggests that women would not, under rational circumstances, choose to join the group. In this article, we address two resultant questions: why do Western women join Daesh? Are their motivations distinct from other Islamist recruits? Using an original dataset of social media activity from 17 Western female recruits between 2011–15, we conclude that women are primarily driven by religious ideology that adopts an expressly gendered frame. We find that feelings of isolation and disaffection also drive migration. We suggest that female foreign recruits are not unique in their motivations and share many similarities with male fighters and women in other Islamist organisations. This research has valuable implications for security studies and counterterrorism, which tend to treat extremist women as unique. Female recruits should be taken seriously as insurgents intent on establishing an Islamic caliphate.

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Section: Conclusion and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 78%

Explaining extremism: Western women in Daesh

Loken

Zelenz

2017

Eur j.of int. secur.

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“…Through this frame, journalists emphasize ‘love connections’ between female terrorists and their lovers, husbands, male family members, or friends. The continued use of gendered news frames minimizes the perception of women as threatening by reinforcing the idea that ‘violent women’ are paradoxical and that terrorism is an inherently masculine domain (Autcher, 2012; Conway and McInerney, 2012; Gardner, 2007; Jaworski, 2010; Lavie-Dinur et al, 2013; Nacos, 2005).…”

Section: Mediated Representations Of Female Terroristsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Through this frame, journalists emphasize 'love connections' between female terrorists and their lovers, husbands, male family members, or friends. The continued use of gendered news frames minimizes the perception of women as threatening by reinforcing the idea that 'violent women' are paradoxical and that terrorism is an inherently masculine domain (Autcher, 2012;Conway and McInerney, 2012;Gardner, 2007;Jaworski, 2010;Lavie-Dinur et al, 2013;Nacos, 2005). Like Nacos, Elizabeth Gardner (2007) constructed a typology of news frames used to portray female terrorists; however, she took a quantitative approach, resulting in the following categories: Nationalism, Revenge, Desire for Martyrdom, Escape, Victimization, Religious Cause, Redemption, Feminist Pride, and Other (p. 918).…”

Section: Mediated Representations Of Female Terroristsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Framing the ‘White Widow’: Using intersectionality to uncover complex representations of female terrorism in news media

Auer

Sutcliffe

Lee

2018

Media, War & Conflict

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Following 21 September 2013, news media in the UK offered extensive and elaborate coverage of the Westgate Mall Massacre in Nairobi, Kenya. This act of terrorism, perpetrated by Al-Shabaab, left over 60 people dead. What news media considered particularly captivating was not the devastation of the attack, but the suspected involvement of Samantha Lewthwaite. She remained at the center of news media in Britain for several months after the attack, dubbed the ‘White Widow’. In this article, the authors employ an intersectional approach to explore the ways that race, religion, nationality, age, class, and gender converge in mediated representations of Lewthwaite. They argue that the application of intersectionality results in a more holistic understanding of the content and discursive impact of news narratives about female terrorists and find that news media both vilify and normalize Lewthwaite, representing her participation in terrorism through complex constellations of identity.

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“…Work on representation of women's political violence (see Sjoberg and Gentry 2007;Gentry 2011a;Brown 2011;Auchter 2012; Ahall 2012) has been paired usefully with work that discusses those issues and pairs it with fieldwork trying to understand how women experience participation in conflict, militancy, and terrorism (see McEvoy 2009;Alison 2008;MacKenzie 2009;Parashar 2009;2010;. This work has made a number of important contributions to analyzing female terrorism and militancy.…”

Section: Thinking About Women's Participation Gender and Terrorismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Female terrorism and militancy

2016

Routledge Handbook of Critical Terrorism Studies

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Gendering Terror

Cited by 40 publications

References 13 publications

Explaining extremism: Western women in Daesh

Explaining extremism: Western women in Daesh

Framing the ‘White Widow’: Using intersectionality to uncover complex representations of female terrorism in news media

Female terrorism and militancy

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