Terrorism, Gender and Women

Toward an Integrated Research Agenda

Alexandra Phelan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367623104
• eBook ISBN: 9781000225006
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Terrorism, Gender and Women: Towards an Integrated Research Agenda encourages greater integration of gender-sensitive approaches to studies of violent extremism and terrorism.

This book seeks to create and inspire a dialogue among scholars of conflict, terrorism and gender by suggesting the necessity of incorporating gender analysis to fill gaps within, and further enhance, our understanding of political violence. The chapters featured in the book interrogate how recent developments in the field– such as the proliferation of propaganda and online messaging, the "decline" or shifting presence of ISIS, the continued "rise" of far-right extremism, and the changing roles of women in political violence – necessitate a gendered understanding of radicalisation, participation, and of strategies to counter and prevent both violent extremism and terrorism. Taken together, they encourage a discussion of new ways in understanding how women and men can be affected by terrorism and violent extremism differently, and how involvement can often be influenced by highly gendered experiences and considerations.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

Women Too: Explaining Gender Ideologies of Ethnopolitical Organizations

Victor Asal, Nazli Avdan, and Nourah Shuaibi

ABSTRACT

What explains the gender ideologies of ethnopolitical organizations? Recently, scholarship has cast attention to the determinants of violent organizations’ female recruitment patterns. Others have examined the effects of gender ideology on organizational tactics. There is a paucity of work on the determinants of gender ideologies. The article redresses this lacuna by exploring how organizational characteristics influence the gender platforms of ethnopolitical organizations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Focusing on 102 ethnic and ethnoreligious MENA for 25 years from 1980 to 2004, the study finds that broader gender ideologies shape gender platforms. In addition, organizations that provide social services are significantly more likely to advocate gender inclusivity. The context in which organizations operate also has significant effects in that state repression steers organizations to adopt gender inclusivity. The study thus contributes to an emerging literature on gender, shifting focus from the state to the organizational context.

Why do some ethnopolitical organizations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)— such as the National Popular Movement in Morocco and the Communal Liberation Party in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC)—adopt gender-inclusive ideologies while others do not? At first blush, ethnoreligious political organizations are expected to be unfriendly to women. Ethnic and nationalist claims ride on gender inequality and structural violence to legitimize the resort to arms.¹ Conventional wisdom would presume that these organizations are militaristic in spirit and espouse norms of male dominance.² Some ethnopolitical organizations conform to this initial intuition. Ansar-al-Islam, a militant insurgency group in Iraq, and political parties, such as the Popular Movement in Morocco and Turkish Unity Party in the TRNC, are ethnopolitical organizations that reject the inclusion of women in public life. In contrast, other ethnopolitical organizations that operate in the same set of countries embrace gender inclusivity. The Ba’ath Party in Iraq, the National Popular Movement in Morocco and the Communal Liberation Party in TRNC endorse gender inclusion. In short, rich variation in gender ideologies of ethnopolitical organizations defies these instinctive expectations. Moreover, these organizations claim to represent the same ethnic groupings: both the Communal Liberation Party and the Turkish Unity Party in TRNC represent Turkish ethnics in Cyprus. Despite this fact, they have opposing perspectives on the roles of women. There is considerable variation in how gender ideologies are exhibited across comparable organizations.

Much ink has been spilled on how institutional mechanisms can be tailored to represent ethnic minorities and obtain gender balance.³ Existing research finds that formal institutions may not necessarily improve minority women’s representation.⁴ Especially in countries, such as in the MENA, where these institutions are lacking, women have limited access to politics. There are widespread beliefs that gender equality is an instrument of Western influence, making it particularly difficult to overturn traditional norms about gender hierarchies.⁵ Gender quotas, for example, have fallen short of purported ideals in ethnically diverse societies.⁶

This study contributes to a pioneering body of work that shifts focus from gender at the country level⁷ to gender at the organizational level.⁸ Women look to membership in organizations as a stage from which to launch subsequent societal agendas of redressing gender inequality.⁹ Women can then leverage their experiences within these organizations to attain greater access to power in society at large.¹⁰A broader body of work tells us that ideology also affects organizational behavior, affecting target legitimation¹¹ and tactical choice.¹² Importantly, gender ideologies in particular predispose organizations toward nonviolent means of contestation.¹³ Gender ideologies affect not just tactical choices within movements but mobilization potential as well. For example, Schaftenaar’s study¹⁴ shows that gender equality can augment mobilization potential as well as the likelihood of pacific means of expressing political voice. The consensus from recent scholarship is that ideology matters.¹⁵ Yet scholarship lacks an understanding of why organizations have specific gender ideologies in the first place. That is the question that this article examines.

The article advances this recent scholarship in several ways. Instead of focusing on violent organizations, it shows that parallel mechanisms incubate gender inclusivity in violent and nonviolent ethnopolitical organizations (VEOs and nonVEOs, respectively). Just as parties proffer entry points for women¹⁶, ethnopolitical organizations can similarly enhance women’s self-actualization. By focusing on a different set of organizations—ethnopolitical groups—rather than violent political organizations (VPOs),¹⁷ the article contributes to the scholarship’s understanding of gender within political organizations. VPOs are drawn from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) dataset; therefore, armed conflict is the backdrop condition for inclusion in the sample.¹⁸ In contrast, the Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior (MAROB)’s inclusion criterion does not require groups to be armed opposition groups.¹⁹ Understanding gender ideologies of ethnopolitical groups is particularly important given that these groups are mobilized around minority rights.

Analysis is conducted on a sample of ethnic and ethnoreligious political organizations from the MAROB dataset. MAROB provides information on 102 organizations, which together represent 22 ethnoreligious groups in 16 countries in the MENA.²⁰ These are groups that represent ethnic groups such as Kurds, or religious groups such as Shi’ites and Sunnis. It should be noted that the MAROB data are based off of the Minorities at Risk (MAR) dataset.²¹ MAR codes ethnic groups as well as religious groups that:

“—collectively suffers, or benefits from, systematic discriminatory treatment vis-à-vis other groups in a society; and/or

—collectively mobilizes in defense or promotion of its self-defined interests.”²²

Thus, ethnic, religious and ethnoreligious groups that fit this category are included in the original MAR dataset and, by extension, in the MAROB dataset. For this reason, MAROB incorporates Shi’ite and Sunni organizations, which are based on religious representation.²³

The first year an organization is gender inclusive is the first year for whic...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Terrorism, Gender and Women: Toward an Integrated Research Agenda
• 1 Women Too: Explaining Gender Ideologies of Ethnopolitical Organizations
• 2 Part and Parcel? Examining Al Shabaab and Boko Haram’s Violence Targeting Civilians and Violence Targeting Women
• 3 From Pawn to Knights: The Changing Role of Women’s Agency in Terrorism?
• 4 Do White Supremacist Women Adopt Movement Archetypes of Mother, Whore, and Fighter?
• 5 Exceptional Inclusion: Understanding the PKK’s Gender Policy
• 6 Outbidding and Gender: Dynamics in the Colombian Civil War
• 7 The Lure of (Violent) Extremism: Gender Constructs in Online Recruitment and Messaging in Indonesia
• 8 Gendered Reflections? Extremism in the UK’s Radical Right and al-Muhajiroun Networks
• Index