Defying Rules. Defying Gender?: Women’s Resistance to Islamic State

Abstract

Through disproportionate restrictions placed on women’s movement and visualization within its “caliphate”, the Islamic State (IS) group enforced its policies of female domesticity and submission. Studies on IS governance of local Iraqi, Syrian and Kurdish women have focused overwhelmingly on their victimization, abuse, and restricted agency. By contrast, this paper uncovers the opportunities, activities, and impacts of individual and collective nonviolent resistance led by local Sunni and Yazidi women. Through endeavors such as personal resilience, individual confrontations, and even group protest, local female civilian women acted against the group’s policies, members, ideology, and expectations of female passivity.