The Socio‐Psychological Aspects of Women's Involvement in Terrorist Activities in Bangladesh

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the potential reasons behind female participation in terrorism in context of Bangladesh. Interestingly, there has been a gradual oversight of the threat of female terrorists with the view that involvement in Jihadi activities by women are symbolized as less criminally motivated and thus they may have a little role to play in the terrorist activities. It has been manifested as well in many research that women have been employed as spies, collaborators and in the frontline of war but had insignificant contribution in aspects of leadership and decision making capacity as long as female terrorists conformed to the rules of terrorism which are mostly made by men. Though traditionally women in Bangladesh have been seen and considered as peace-loving and less dangerous to security, Bangladesh hence experienced recent female involvement in Islamic terrorism in December 2016 during a police raid in Ashkona, Dhaka. This incident has brought about the aspect of women’s moti¬vations and roles signifying a challenge to traditional gender stereotypes. The issue of female involvement in terrorism has not been widely researched and hence there is no universally applicable explanation for female engagement in terrorism. There are sociological arguments and other relevant individual psychological reasons that require to be studied in order to conceptualize mainstream female involvement in terrorism. Against this backdrop, this study on one hand, analyses available secondary materials drawn from a variety of sources of Internet in order to investigate the reasons of female terrorism. In context of Bangladesh, by approaching to case studies methods, the paper moves forward in analysing the grounds of women involvement in terrorism and lastly suggests some gender-oriented policies to counter terrorism on the other hand.