Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars

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Why do women go to war? Despite the reality that female combatants exist the world over, we still know relatively little about who these women are, what motivates them to take up arms, how they are used by armed groups, and what happens to them when war ends. “Insurgent Women” examines three important aspects of women’s participation in nonstate armed groups: mobilization, participation in combat, and conflict resolution. In doing so, it sheds light on women’s pathways into and out of nonstate armed groups.

“Insurgent Women” uses three case studies to explore variation in women’s participation in nonstate armed groups in a range of contemporary political and social contexts: the civil war in Ukraine, the conflicts involving Kurdish groups in the Middle East, and the civil war in Colombia. Women’s participation in these civil wars is then compared to the roles women take on in Salafi-Jihadi groups like Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and Islamic State.

The book’s conclusion addresses the implications of women’s participation in these conflicts for policy, including post-conflict programming and deradicalization. This is an accessible and timely work that will be a useful introduction to women’s roles in contemporary conflict.

Read an interview with Jessica Trisko Darden about the book.

Praise for “Insurgent Women”

“‘Insurgent Women’ explores the roles of female rebels in civil wars and sheds new light on how these women participate in recruitment, fighting and peacebuilding. The authors use an impressive range of sources — including interviews, archival materials and propaganda — to analyze variation across time and space in detailed case studies from around the world. The result is an important new contribution to the burgeoning research on women’s often-overlooked roles in war, and will be of great interest to scholars and policymakers alike.”

— Dara Kay Cohen, Ford Foundation Associate Professor of Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

 

Jessica Trisko Darden is a Jeane Kirkpatrick Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an assistant professor in the School of International Service at American University.

Alexis Henshaw is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at Troy University and author of “Why Women Rebel: Understanding Women’s Participation in Armed Rebel Groups” (Routledge, 2016).

Ora Szekely is an associate professor of political science at Clark University and author of “The Politics of Militant Group Survival in the Middle East: Resources, Relationships, and Resistance” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).