The inclusion of women in jihad: gendered practices of legitimation in Islamic State recruitment propaganda

Abstract

Although jihadist terrorist organisations envisage a society divided according to strict gender roles, they have increasingly turned to women in pursuit of their goals. This is a double-edged sword for jihadist groups: while recruitment of women increases the pool of activists, the discrepancy between their patriarchal beliefs and women’s enlistment may have implications for their legitimacy. How jihadists address this dilemma in their appeals to women, however, has received little attention to date. Integrating literature on recruitment and legitimacy, this article looks at the case of ISIS from a gender lens to explore how the group reconciled its recruitment of women with its patriarchal ideology. A critical discourse analysis of the group’s publications between 2015 and 2017 reveals three gendered narratives that ISIS has used to substantiate its recruitment of women. These narratives depict women as builders of the Ummah, representatives of Islam, and guardians of the Caliphate. In all constructs, it is argued, women are assigned agency, with their violent agency specifically developing over time. The legitimation attempts of ISIS provide insight into the growing appeal to enlist women by patriarchal terrorist organisations, their ability to rationalise this, and the potentially refutable claims to counter this trend.