Women Involvement in Terrorism: A Critical Look at their Roles in Some Selected Terrorist Organizations

Happiness Akunna Imoisili, Adekunle Saheed Ajisebiyawo and Babatunde Agara
Additional contact information
Happiness Akunna Imoisili: Department of Political Science and Public Administration Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State
Adekunle Saheed Ajisebiyawo: Department of Political Science and Public Administration Igbinedion University, Okada, Edo State
Babatunde Agara: Department of Political Science Ambrose Ali University, Ekpoma, Edo State

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science, 2025, vol. 9, issue 4, 2174-2188

Abstract: Women’s involvement in terrorism has become a pressing concern globally, with increasing numbers of women participating in terrorist activities, including combat, suicide bombings and recruitment. This paper examined the roles and motivations of women in selected terrorist organizations, including Hamas, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and Boko Haram. A critical analysis of existing literature reveals that women play various roles in these organizations including combatants, suicide bombers, recruiters and fundraising. The study adopted a feminist perspective, arguing that women’s involvement in terrorist is often driven by a complex mix of factors, including socio-economic marginalization, political oppression and ideological manipulation. The paper explored the ways in which women’s involvement in terrorism is shaped by their experiences of patriarchy, oppression, and marginalization. It also examined the way in which terrorist organization exploits these experiences to recruit and radicalize women. This paper drew data from a range of sources including academic papers, policy documents and reports. This paper highlighted the importance of understanding the complex and multifaceted nature of women’s involvement in terrorism. It also underscored the need for policy makers to seek a more nuanced understanding of women involvement in terrorism and to develop targeted strategies to prevent radicalization. The paper contributed to the existing literature on women’s involvement in terrorism by providing a critical analysis of the roles and motivations of women in selected terrorist organization. Overall, this paper provided a comprehensive understanding of women’s involvement in terrorism and to inform the development of effective policies and strategies to prevent radicalization and promote deradicalization. Also, this paper found that women play a variety of roles, sometimes even more, in terrorist organizations. Men do feature mainly as combatants, leaders, and planners, whereas women because of their natural advantage over men, feature in many other roles that men cannot apparently featured.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rsisinternational.org/journals/ijriss/ ... ssue-4/2174-2188.pdf (application/pdf)
https://rsisinternational.org/journals/ijriss/arti ... orist-organizations/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bcp:journl:v:9:y:2025:issue-4:p:2174-2188

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science is currently edited by Dr. Nidhi Malhan

More articles in International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science from International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dr. Pawan Verma ().