RT Article
T1 Palestinian Women in Terrorism: a Double-Edged Sword?
JF International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology
VO 64
IS 5
SP 443
OP 469
A1 Erez, Edna
A1 Laster, Kathy
A2 Laster, Kathy
LA English
YR 2020
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1693005468
AB Drawing on a decade of research on terrorism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we show how subjective "rational choices" motivate some women to engage in terrorist activism. Focusing on the motives of young women who engage in terrorism is consistent with feminist theory's insistence on women's agency—even at the extremes. In addition to the well-established motivations for terrorism reported in the literature, interviews with young women involved in terrorism reveal mixed personal motives for their gender-defying choices, including thrill-seeking and some conscious rebellion. However, we contend that women's subjective rationale for participation in such violent behavior needs to be contextualized. A cost-benefit approach, we maintain, highlights the strategic considerations supporting the deployment of women as combatants by Palestinian terrorist organizations. We argue that the inclusion of women in terrorist activism in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict exposes a major fault line in attitudes to the role and proper place of women in what remains largely a patriarchal culture. This social ambivalence accounts for why, on all measures, women fare worse than their male counterparts. The implications of the findings for feminist research as well as policy are discussed.
K1 Cost–benefit analysis
K1 Agency
K1 Motivations
K1 Terrorism
K1 Palestinian women
DO 10.1177/0306624X19862429