Abstract
WOMEN AND TERRORISM Female activity in domestic and international terror groups Margaret Gonzales-Perez London: Routledge, 2008. 162pp, US$140, cloth (ISBN 978-0-415-46467-3)Although history offers abundant examples of women fighting in wars, we still tend to see female militancy as aberrant, and the mainstream academic literature on warfare largely excludes women. Margaret Gonzales-Perez has made a significant contribution to the small but growing body of work that examines female militancy. While her book suffers from methodological and typological weaknesses that limit the application of her theoretical framework, its scope exceeds everything else in print. She examines 26 domestic and international militant groups, most of which have heretofore not been studied from a gendered perspective. This contribution ensures that, despite its shortcomings, Women and Terrorism will be a mainstay in the field for the foreseeable future.Drawing on a broad base of research, the book's central claim that women are more likely to join domestic terrorist organizations than international ones for two reasons. First, domestic groups offer greater opportunities for female members to improve their status. Second, these groups are more likely to reject traditional gender roles and welcome women as members. Conversely, international terrorist organizations attract fewer women because they tend to focus on external opponents and rarely challenge conventional gender norms (1-2).Gonzales-Perez discusses some well-known groups, including the IRA, the Baader-Meinhof gang, and the Palestinian Liberation Organization. She also examines groups in which women are not commonly known to have operated, including some from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Algeria. The quality of this research makes this book one ofthe most comprehensive analyses of women in African political violence to date (79). The chapter on the Americas considers the role of women in Uruguay's Tupamaros and El Salvador's Farabundo Marti, particularly their positions after conflict has ended. In the Farabundo Marti, for instance, women were employed and treated in the same way as men during the conflict. Afterwards, however, the group refused to provide the director of the Women's Secretariat with pay equal to comparable departments, and 70 to 80 percent of the female excombatants did not receive the benefits accorded them through the post-revolutionary land reform program (27). The reversion to societal norms in the postconflict phase indicates that while some organizations expected women to fight and participate in the conflict, these same organizations were not willing to recognize that participation during demobilization. Gonzales-Perez's discussion of women's demobilization, though brief, groundbreaking, since the question has yet to receive much academic attention.The book's theoretical model, which aims to explain differing levels of female participation in terrorist organizations, falls short because of fundamental methodological problems. The author's definition and application of the term terrorism - which she insists is not intended to imply any normative value or judgment - insensitive to the political implications of the term and ignores the consequences of applying it to independence movements and insurgent groups (79). …
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