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

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.