RT Article
T1 The Lethality of Female Suicide Bombers
JF Women & criminal justice
VO 29
IS 4/5
SP 266
OP 282
A1 Fullmer, Nyssa
A2 Mizrahi, Stephanie Lipson
A2 Tomsich, Elizabeth
LA English
YR 2019
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1733533370
AB Over the past 50 years, suicide bombings have become an increasingly common tactic of politically motivated violence, and a rising number of these attacks feature women perpetrators. Prior literature suggested that female-perpetrated suicide bombings occurring between 1985 through 2008 inflicted greater casualties, which may account in part for their increased use by terror groups. The current research project ascertains whether sex continues to predict the lethality of suicide bombing attacks perpetrated by terror groups over the decade leading up to 2016. The study utilizes secondary data sampled from the Global Terrorism Database (N = 881) and the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (N = 1,722). A negative binomial model regressing lethality against perpetrator and conflict covariates did not observe a statistically significant relationship between sex and lethality. Male and female suicide bombers demonstrated similar lethality in suicide bombing events between 2005 and 2016, although scatterplots suggest some aberration during the years 2009, 2010, and 2016. Pairwise comparisons of perpetrator sex by conflict observed some variation in the lethality of attacks, with female suicide bombers from Al Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq, and Iraqi rebel groups found more lethal than male suicide bombers from Boko Haram and the Nigerian rebels. The current research project contributes to the literature by demonstrating the evolving nature of terrorism and tactics relevant to the lethality of politically motivated violent attacks.
K1 Female suicide bombers
K1 Female terrorists
K1 History of terrorism
K1 Lethality and terrorism
K1 Suicide bombers
K1 Terrorist organizations
K1 Women and terrorism
DO 10.1080/08974454.2018.1548409