Conclusion: The Study of Women, Gender, and Terrorism

This conclusion reviews the contributions of this book it is important to apply gendered lenses not only to women’s participation in terrorist organizations, but to those organizations more generally. This chapter draws out a number of the crucial themes across the diverse chapters in this volume, particularly as they have implications both for the study of women’s participation in terrorism and for the study of terrorism (and even global security) generally. It focuses on three: questions of gender and agency in global politics, explorations of the interdependence of gender and discursive representations of terrorism, and potentially productive directions for theorizing terrorism and counterterrorism in gender-inclusive and gender-sensitive ways. If, as the chapters in this book have demonstrated, it is no longer possible to ignore women as participants in the study of 21st century terrorism, this conclusion suggests ways forward into exploring those connections based on the empirical and theoretical work of the volume’s contributors.