PAPER DRAFT
From Beliefs to Actions:
What a Gendered Study of Violent Radicalization Processes Can Teach us
5th European Conference on Politics and Gender,
June 8-10 2017, Lausanne
Do not quote or cite without the author's permission
Johanna Masse
Abstract:
There have always been women terrorists throughout history. From the nineteencentury’s anarchist Narodnaïa Volia to nowadays’ jihadist ISIS, participation of women in
terrorist groups have indeed been recorded. The study of the phenomenon itself is however
very recent due to substantial bias in the appraisal of women as perpetrators of political
violence. For instance, at a time when a lot of attention is put on violent radicalization,
there is little to none analysis specifically on women’s radicalization. As we will
demonstrate, it is very problematic as it hinders a global appreciation and understanding of
the phenomenon of violent radicalization. More specifically, the relation between nonviolent and violent radicalization – one of the most debated issues in the terrorism field
nowadays – would in our opinion greatly benefit from a gendered analysis of the processes
of radicalization. Due to societal pressures and organizational constraints, women do
“experience” radicalization differently than their male counterparts. It influences their
relation to violence, and how they conceive the use of violent tactics. As such, analyzing
the subjective trajectories of women involved in terrorist groups – not only how these
women came to have “radical beliefs”, but also how they came to be translated into violent
actions – may hold the key to understand the relation between non-violent and violent
radicalization in general. In order to see if it’s the case, we reconstructed the “life stories”
of some of the women involved in the conflict in Northern Ireland, through personal
interviews and second-hand data (media sources, scientific works, etc.). It permitted us,
inter alia, to highlight the reflexive dimension of radicalization’s process and the
importance of requalifying the meaning of “violence” when its expressions may be
constrained by societal gender expectations.
Plan:
Introduction
1
1)
2)
3)
4)
The missing link between thought and actions
A “men’s world”: women as political actors
A “woman’s touch”: a gendered perspective on “terrorist” organizations
Deprivation & empathy: preliminary findings
Conclusion
2
Presentation:
Introduction
Certainly when most of us think ‘terrorists’ we do not see
‘woman’ (Elshtain, 1995 : 178).
Despite women being engaged in political violence since a long time, their
involvement and their role are still very understudied, especially regarding violent
militancy. The taboo regarding women violence is such that when confronted to it, we are
often uncomfortable with dealing with it. Unlike men violence, we are much more inclined
to find causes and reasons explaining such actions, and in some ways alleviating their moral
if not legal responsibility. Therefore, relatively not much is known about the history of it
comparing to their male counterparts even if the phenomenon is by all account as old.
After all, knowledge about women violence – as violence in general – is dependent
on “recording and data preservation capacities – the capacities of memory and data
archiving of societies”1 (Michaud, 2012 : 11), and the denial regarding women violence
made it difficult to get recordings of it. It’s only in the eighties that women violence really
began to be analyzed, thanks to Barton C. Hacker’s work (Hacker, 1981). Before that, as
Jean Bethke Elshtain wrote: « Violent deeds may be done [by women], but they will go
unnarrated, not becoming part of a given society self-definition » (Elshtain, 1995 : 169).
It’s time in our opinion to let the voices of women perpetrators be heard. Not because
women violence is inherently different from men violence, but because « violent women
are violent people, who, like all people, violent or not, live in a gendered world » (Gentry
& Sjoberg, 2015 : 2). And how can we hope to understand a phenomenon when we put
aside how it mays translate to half of the population, even if just a fraction of women get
involved in violent militancy?
This presentation will be divided into 4 parts. I will begin by looking at one of the
most problematic aspects of radicalization’s studies, the link between thoughts and actions.
It will allow me in the second part to highlight the complexities of analyzing women
violence in general, but also in the third part to show how a gendered approach can
potentially help to better understand the phenomenon. In the last part, I will briefly present
some of the potential research avenues that I noticed from one of my doctoral research’s
case studies: republican women during the Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”.
1)
The missing link between thoughts and actions
In less than two decades, the term “radicalization” became one of the most – if not
the most – debated subject in the field of violence studies. And that’s without considering
1
Personal translation of the author
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its recurrent use in everyday life, where the word is used and abused without really taking
the time to explain what it refers to. Not that’s an easy thing to… The concept of
“radicalization” might have “appeared” in scientific literature a little after the 9/11 events
– its use growing around 2004 and 2005 with the Madrid and London bombings – a
definition has still to be accepted by academics and practitioners. Seven years after the
publication of his seminal article, the concept is still a constant “source of confusion” as it
was highlighted by Mark Sedgwick (Sedgwick, 2010); and used to refer to everything
« what goes before the bomb goes off » (Neumann, 2008 : 4).
To add a little more precision to what the fuss was about, some distinctions had to be
made. That’s how the term of “violent radicalization” became to be widely used, a way to
refer to address to the mysterious processes leading someone to engage in terrorist
activities. Yet again, how to define “violent radicalization” is problematic. Most of the
time, “violent radicalization” is associated to “behavioral radicalization”, that’s to say
when people engage in violent actions; while “non-violent radicalization” is associated
with “cognitive radicalization”, that’s to say when people “acquire” radical ideas. The first
one is considered dangerous while the second one very much less so. And for that reason,
less analyzed. After all, to have “radical” ideas is not – and should not indeed - to be treated
as a “bad” thing. What was considered as a radical idea one century ago might very well
considered a natural thing now. For example, the right for women to vote.
The problem is, one shouldn’t associate “violence” solely with direct actions, for
even somebody who don’t engage personally and physically in violent actions can be
instrumental in the committing of one. We could call it the “healthy carrier” problem.
Ideologues of groups using terrorist strategies for example, or recruiters, don’t participate
most of the time to violent actions. However, they are instrumental to the realization of
them. Moreover, and we will develop this point later, the occupied function is not always
freely chosen by the members. Organizational or societal constraints can indeed influence
the roles taken, the “group” being above the individual. In the long run, it’s not necessarily
the one with the gun who is more dangerous for the safety of everyone.
Moreover, it is as much important to understand the link between “cognitive”
radicalization and “behavioral” radicalization that is to understand the one between
“violent” radicalization and “non-violent” radicalization. By analyzing only one halve of
the problem – as some academics do (Borum, 2011a ; 2011b) – we blind ourselves to the
“whole picture”. The power of beliefs shouldn’t be underappreciated, because even if
« (n)one of the widely used models and theories of radicalization suggest that beliefs or
ideologies are the sole influence on or explanation for why people turn to terrorism. […]
It is precisely because of the inherently political nature of the political motivated violence
that terrorist groups and theirs membres are defined with reference with their ideology »
(Neumann, 2013 : 880-881).
The relation between beliefs and actions is a mysterious one, for as Daniela Pisoiu
explained it is «… unclear how these two components might interact, in particular whether
and how radical ideology affects violent behavior or whether the relationship is perhaps
inverse » (Pisoiu, 2012 : 12). That’s the reason why a gendered analysis of radicalization
processes seems to hold great potentials in better understanding the phenomenon. Women
indeed, as we said, have for a long time participate in groups using terrorist strategies.
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However, their roles have mostly been “behind-the-scenes” in general, not always by
“choice” as we will see now.
2)
A “men’s world”: women as actor of political violence
But before looking up the roles and functions occupied by women in “terrorist”
groups, it’s necessary to take a moment to analyze women’s agency in political violence.
For it is a problematic topic even nowadays. As it was highlighted in the beginning of this
paper, women have never been strangers to violence, as an object or a subject of it. Until
the eighties however, not very much have been written on women as perpetrators of
violence. And even today, the literature is still very partial due to persistent stereotypes
regarding to the phenomenon. As Linda Åhäll explained:
In traditional stories about war and peace, men and
masculinities are linked to war, while women and femininity are
associated with peace. The male-identity is seen as life-taking,
whereas the female-identity is seen as life-giving, and as such, linked
to motherhood (Åhäll, 2012 : 103).
The link between women and peace is most often taken for granted and as such not
really explained: « as we all know, the connection between women and peace is ancient »
(Forcey, 1994 : 355). This argument was even in some occasions used to advocate for the
empowering of women in the political sphere, some authors arguing that: « as women gain
power in these countries, they [the countries] should become less aggressive, adventurous,
competitive, and violent » (Fukuyama, 1998 : 27) cited in (Auchter, 2012 : 127). Even if
such stereotyping is more and more contested nowadays, it’s still not without consequence.
The way women committing violent acts are portrayed in the media is symptomatic of that.
Even the way the motivations of women activists are presented are distorted by the
gender dimension. Whereas most studies on men’ political violence are based on the
premise that perpetrators are rational and their actions are instrumentals, the same cannot
be exactly said for women’s, where “emotions” have the prime role. Whether it is love and
blind trust for a fellow combatant, or revenge for the loss of a family member or “society”
itself, women’s motivations are most of the time framed as to satisfy our need to simplify
a complex reality where violence can come as naturally as peace for women. The thing is,
as Paige Eager wrote “Societies, regardless of cultural and/or religious influences, seem
especially uncomfortable with women who are violent. Exceptions being fending off an
attacker, defending her children, fighting back a terribly abusive husband, some sporting
activities and to some extend women engaged in military combat ” (Eager, 2008 : 3).
This is the reason why even when women are perpetrators of violence – criminal or
political – they are not considered as their male counterpart. Indeed, they are often
consciously or not associated to the “victim” category: they committed such acts because
either they were pathologically ill, or because men (or the context created by men) made
them do it. As such they had no other choice: they are not entirely (if at all) responsible for
such violence, especially regarding political violence. As Jessica Auchter wrote: « it is
argued that they are participating either having been convinced by a men, or in lieu of a
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man who has been killed, but not as an actor in and of herself » (Auchter, 2012 : 129). In
order to cope with the phenomenon, women’s violence is exceptionalized and
individualized. “Normal” women in “normal” times are not violent. This is why they need
to be “protected”, even from themselves… The problem is violent women are not
considered as autonomous as violent men. However, as Jessica Auchter highlighted in her
paper “Gendering Terror”: « Agency remains the attribute which marks entrance into the
legitimate political community » (Auchter, 2012 : 121). It might be time to recognize that
violence is not solely a “men’s world”, and never have been.
3)
A “woman’s touch”: a gendered perspective on “terrorist”
organizations
The involvement of women in “terrorist” group is not a new “trend”. The history of
women participating in political violence is as old as political violence itself. In the case of
modern terrorism for instance, women have been known to be involved in all type of groups
using “terrorist” strategies, either nationalist, anarchist or religious (Bloom, 2011; Cragin
& Daly, 2009). There are however some specificities regarding the place, the function and
the importance of women depending the group in question.
Because the “use” of women is highly symbolic either for political or religious group,
all terrorist organizations do not apprehend the role of its women members in the same
way. For example, Nira Yuval-Davis and Floya Anthias remarked in their study of ethnonationalistic conflicts that: “Men tend to be positioned as the active, public agents of ethnonationalist struggles while women are located in passive roles, as symbols of the nation
and protectors of hearth and home”. And the same could be affirmed for religious groups.
However, it does not mean that “circumstances” cannot affect women’s “passivity”,
allowing and even sometimes encouraging the involvement of women. If the conflict take
a turn for worse, terrorist organizations are quick to change their policies regarding
women’s participation.
The case of women suicide bombers during the second intifada is a clear example of
that. Before 2001, only secular organization “accepted” women’ participation in
martyrdom’s operation. In August of the same year however, and after a couple of highly
publicised terrorist attacks perpetrated by Palestinian women, Saudi Arabia’s High Islamic
Council issued a fatwa encouraging the phenomenon. The Hamas organization was still at
this time against the use of women, and added one condition, namely that “women can
serve as combatants only after the male ranks have been depleted” (Zedalis, 2004 : 24).
However, the group soon had to adapt to it in front of the concurrence of the Fatah, the
Islamic Jihad or the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. And on January the 14th, Reem al-Reyashi
committed the first female terrorist attack for the Hamas (in association with the Al-Aqsa
Martyrs Brigade).
What can we learn from this example? Palestinian women did not wait to be given
the authorization of their political group to want to be involved. In some occasions, some
of them even defy their political authorities’ rules. It’s the case of Dareen Abu Aysheh for
instance, who was a Hamas member but had to go to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in order
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to do her attack because the Hamas refused to “sponsor” her (on February 27th, 2002). But
in most cases, women do not go that far and prefer to help the group in any way they can,
even if it means not occupy the function that they want. “Where I can help” is a sentence
that came up a couple of time when I did personal interviews with ex-combatants in
Northern Ireland. The group comes first. Therefore, even women who are not at the frontline of action, who do not commit violent actions themselves, might want to. And they are
ready when asked to. We should not consider these women less dangerous because societal
and group pressures restraint their actions. The potential is still there.
Moreover, “terrorist” organization couldn’t exist very long without the members
occupying “passive” roles. Not everyone can be an operational leader or a fighter, whereas
every organization needs logisticians, a function in which women are very useful even if
their importance is not often recognize (Cragin & Daly, 2009). At least, not yet. To include
a gender dimension in analysing violent militancy may be help to better understand
political violence and not only its more physical aspects. Women may be in the minority
in such groups (between 5 and 30% depending on the studies and the group studied), they
should not be dismissed entirely as it is mostly the case nowadays.
4)
Deprivation & empathy: preliminary findings
In this last part of my presentation, I will mostly concentrate on the preliminary
findings I gathered from the beginning of my fieldwork in Northern Ireland. Northern
Ireland is one of the three case studies I’m interested into as part of my doctoral research,
the other two being Palestine and Pays Basque. As such, it should be noted that my main
interest is in ethno-nationalist conflicts, and may or may not apply to other cases of women
violent militancy. Moreover, because the conflict began in the late sixties, women I
interviewed grown up in the conflict. They were socialized in it, which evidently had a
major impact on their political trajectories.
But to come back to the interviews, an important aspect of their political involvement
is in my point of view the empathic dimension. Empathy is a dimension that have yet to be
really analyzing, at least in relation to radicalization studies. As it stands, it’s mostly to
highlight the lack of empathy of perpetrators for their victims that the concept is used
Deprivation in contrast is an element that come back regularly in modelling about
radicalization processes. The concept of “relative deprivation” especially, put forward by
Fathali Moghaddam (Moghaddam, 2005), has been relatively useful to grasp the influence
of “preconditions” in personal trajectories, especially the feeling of injustice. However, it
does have its shortcomings due to its vagueness…
However, it seems that mixed together the two concepts can be quite pertinent. When
interviewed about their engagement in violent militancy, ex-combatant often explained that
it wasn’t as much what had been “done” to them – what they lived – than what they saw
done to other members of the community. The idea that something had to be done, no
matter the consequences for themselves, came more than once in the interviews. As the
idea that they had no other choice in the matter. It clearly shows through their testimonies
that their individual self was in their eyes of no importance comparing to the group or/and
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society. Their individual identities were clearly dependant on their social ones, and even to
some extent erased by them because of the circumstances.
Conclusion
Women have as much potential to violence than men, even if it seems true by all
accounts that this potential is more often than not realized. Should it be the reason why it’s
under-analyzed? We don’t agree. As it was perfectly explained by Patricia Pearson a
decade ago:
The consequence of our refusal to concede female
contributions to violence are manifold. It affects our capacity to
promote ourselves as autonomous are responsible beings. It affects
our ability to develop a literature about ourselves that encompasses
the full array of humane emotion and experience. (…) Perhaps above
all, the denial of women’s aggression profoundly undermines our
attempts as a culture to understand violence, to trace its causes and
to quell them. (Pearson, 1997 : 243).
So, perhaps it’s time to do something about it…
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