IGS Project Series 7ዪᛶ䚸᐀ᩍ䚸ᭀຊ䠖ᅜ㝿ⓗどⅬ䛛䜙䛾෌⪃㻌ᇶㄪㅮ₇ዪᛶ䛸䝷䝕䜱䜹䝹䛺㐠ື䝆䜵䞁䝎䞊䛸⣮த䛻䛴䛔䛶䛾᪂䛧䛔どⅬ䜢᥈䜛

Gender and Radical Movement
Exploring New Perspectives on Gender and Conflict䜰䞊䝖䝸䞊䞉䝉䞁䠄䝁䝨䞁䝝䞊䝀䞁኱Ꮫ෸ᩍᤵ䠅
Atreyee Sen (University of Copenhagen)I am interested in women and especially right wing
activism. I am going to try and give you an overview of
the current opinion, scholarship, and how it remains much
divided, about the mobilization of women into radical
religious movements across the world. What Erica and I
are trying to suggest is that we are at a very criticaljuncture in the history of the world where large scaleparticipation of women in religious armies, radical
movements, and civil war is being noted by human rights
activists and scholars all over the world. And, whether this actually gives us new perspectives ongender and conflict, which is because, historically, gender studies emerge from woman
victimologies. It was about looking at women suffering and being victims of war. So, what does itmean for gender studies, and for us to actually look at women who are participating in war,
supporting men in war and picking up arms?
How do we actually represent women as prosecutors and perpetrators of violence? Women who
torture and kill other women, women who are participating in war, killing and torturing other men.
Dara Kay Cohen’s work, for example, talks about how women in Sierra Leone organize rape andtorture of other women as well. How do we actually understand that? With the growing number ofreligious wars and macro and micro level violence across the world, there is a time in history rightnow, when women are joining militaries, paramilitaries, armies, terrorist groups, formal, andinformal militias, groups of people who are just self-styled freedom fighters, undergroundmovements, secessionist movements (both at international and local levels), and also formal andinformal street vigilantes.
What historians, anthropologists, sociologists are trying to see is that, again, we are living in aworld where the idea of violence has completely changed. Where violence, violent conflict,intercommunity clashes, large scale, and small scale global wars has penetrated and infiltrated into
every aspect of society. In this context when women in large numbers are joining these kinds offormal and informal armies, or joining this fight, what does it mean for academic scholarship?
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ዪᛶ࡜ࣛࢹ࢕࢝ࣝ࡞㐠ືI am going to talk a little bit about modes ofrecruitment. There are different ways in which women are
getting recruited in these formal and informal armies.
Some of it is voluntary and spontaneous. If you actually
see religious leaders in action, they are often giving thiskind of indoctrinating speeches which are very easily
available over the internet. Women are joining theseorganizations after giving it a lot of thought. They arebeing seriously mobilized because they are considering
their options and they are well-informed women who are joining these organizations because they
really want to.
Because they feel that the cause is their own and they can identify with their cause. They feel asense of commitment to that cause. The idea that they have been brainwashed is being increasingly
dissipated. There are more women who are really engaging with radical religious rhetoric andjoining these movements. The other side of the story is that often these women are being welcomed
into these radical religious movements because of a crisis in manpower. Increasingly, the men are
either killed in battle or it is that more and more international organizations, for example, find it
easy to simply kill men. For example, if the US army were faced with a team of ISIS men, theywould actually not hesitate to kill, but if they are faced with a team of women, and you know they
have their guns trained in the direction of 500 women, they would hesitate to open fire. So, there isa particular crisis of manpower and that is one of the reasons why there is quite an acceptance of
women joining these armies.
Women are also being coerced and under many circumstances they are being raped, tortured, andcoerced into joining these movements. Sometimes it is a question of birth and motherhood, andagain there is some literature which is emerging in the context of Palestine, for example, wherechildren are just born in the context of violence. And, even if they are girl children, they are just
joining Hamas because that is what you do when you are born in that violent situation. You have noother option. The question of motherhood also becomes important. If you have sons who just go andjoin a local terrorist outfit, then as a mother you want to support your children, you want to lookafter your children. So, you join these groups. But, what is really interesting, and this for me has
been very interesting to watch in the context of right wing activism in India, is the role of informal
support. You have these radical religious movements, and, actually the person who does theircooking, washing, and looking after them is the women.
Therefore, women are not necessary at the forefront of war. They are not really, like, picking up
arms all the time and fighting. But, women show their sympathy and support. And, that becomesreally important in the context of sustaining these movements. And, then, you have the importanceof the female body. Tunisian women, for example, who are going into Syria marrying ISIS men,
getting pregnant, coming back to the safety of their country to deliver the next generation of Jihadist.
What they are doing is that they are offering their body. They are offering their body to the war. But,
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IGS Project Series 7ዪᛶ䚸᐀ᩍ䚸ᭀຊ䠖ᅜ㝿ⓗどⅬ䛛䜙䛾෌⪃㻌having said that, what is important for us to know is that in this context, for example, these women
do not see themselves as terrorists. When they are joining, they do not want to be named as
terrorists. They want to be named as activists, militants, or freedom fighters, and then you have therange of affiliations to goddesses and they like to be called tigers or lions. So, you have, forexample, the Black Widows, the Suicide Bombers Chechen, and you have the Black Tigers, who are
the women suicide bombers in Sri Lanka. So, they don’t identify with the idea of being called aterrorist. They think they are doing something more than that.
Now, what are the sites of mobilization? Where arethese women found, the ones which join theseorganizations. You often find them in areas ofvulnerability—that is, in poor areas, urban slums, inghettos, and in areas of conflict. You often find them inschools, women madrasas, for example, are often targetedby radical movements. You find them in refugee camps,
and in areas where women are either suffering grief orloss because some foreign entity has killed their children,and they are in a state of vulnerability. But, there are also lots of women foreign fighters who are
joining these radical movements. Women who have been born in conditions of privilege, money,
education and freedom, and the other women who want segregation, they want reeling; they want tojoin these movements. So, what is going on there? Are they doing it because they want a sense ofcommunity? Is there some kind of romanticism associated with radical religious movements?
Denmark, for example, from where I am, has the highest rate of foreign fighters. And, they all are
not necessarily Muslim. They have the highest rate of foreign fighters in Egypt and they aren’t just
local everyday dames who are very attracted to this idea of joining radical religious movements.
I think it is time that we took into consideration, in
terms of academic scholarship, that we cannot only lookat these women through the lens of victimhood— that, it
is important for us to look at women through moreagential engagement with war and violence. Public
opinion, academic scholarship, including sort of media
representation, is fairly divided when it comes torepresenting or understanding why or how these women
are joining these movements. For example, you have now
the ‘right to fight feminists’ who believe that women should have the freedom to join violent
political organizations.
Whether it is like state-sponsored armies or not state-sponsored armies. Women should be equal
to men when it comes to fighting. Why is fighting historically considered to be a masculinist
domain? Why is it a man’s world? And, it is important for women if they want equality to also be apart of this aspect of just everyday life, which is that, if you want to be part of a society where you
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have armies, whether they are formal armies or informal armies, it is important for women to be apart of it. But, it is interesting because the feminists, for example, they argue that if you are part ofthese armies, if you are part of state armies or radical religious movements, the presence of womencan change the nature of the movement. They can often soften the movement or take the movement
in a direction which is away from mindless violence. Therefore, according to this point of view, it isimportant for women to join these movements not because women should be just fighting with men,but the presence of women changes the nature of any institution, and any movement. Any maledominated movement—whether violent or non-violent— changes when it incorporates women.
Then, you have the “in-betweeners”. People who are
sitting on the fence saying that women should have thefreedom to join any kind of radical movement or formal
or informal armies, but it is important to recognize thedifference between the male and female bodies. The
female body, for example, is vulnerable in the context ofconflict. If a woman gets trapped, she will be raped, and if
she is raped and she is pregnant, that causes problems.
And, even if she is not raped, if she goes into war and she
has an affair with a local fighter, and she gets pregnant, a pregnant woman will not be able to fight.
So, let's face it that there is a difference in biology between men and women, and it is important for
us to take this into consideration that if women get pregnant then they should have the right towithdraw. Also, if women feel sexually vulnerable in a particular context, then they should have theright to withdraw from war. So, these are the in-betweeners, who said, yes let them participate, butthey should have the freedom of choice to retreat.
And, finally, you have the absolute critics who thinkthat it is outrageous that people should support women’s
engagement with war. Partly because, academics havehistorically believed that, if you don’t highlight women’s
victimologies and women’s suffering, then war will carryon forever. The role of women as peacemakers need to betaken into consideration. Historically, in many conditionsof conflict between men, it is women who haveintervened, and they have intervened very productively inpeace talks and, in informal ways, have brought peace within communities. So, if you glorify or
accept the fact that women should be participating in radical religious movements, without justjumping in and saying that “this is really bad”, “they shouldn’t be doing it”, then this takes away theimportance of women’s suffering—that women do suffer, that women are badly affected by war andconflict. So, the question that comes out of this kind of divided opinion is that who are the women
who are at peace when at war? Why do women want to participate in war? How can war be sold towomen as something which is beneficial for them or that which they can actually benefit from?
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IGS Project Series 7ዪᛶ䚸᐀ᩍ䚸ᭀຊ䠖ᅜ㝿ⓗどⅬ䛛䜙䛾෌⪃㻌

That becomes the controversial question. What are thedebates that emerge in response to that question? Most
academics, for example, are trying to talk about the factthat war gives women a sense of agency andempowerment—the act of carrying arms, the act of
freedom of mobility to walk around freely with guns.
Some women have actually said that women just likewearing uniforms. They think that it makes them feel very
cool about themselves. So, whatever it is, it is a sense inwhich women’s agency and empowerment often becomes tied to conditions of war because war
challenges normative conducts, war challenges patriarchy. Women who are, for example, usuallyused to being cooks and cleaners for their husbands and their responsibility has always been to lookafter the home, and look after the children, and stay at home. In conditions of war, they feel thatthey have the mobility to actually carry a gun and get into war with their husbands. So, there is away in which they can challenge patriarchy. They can step out of their homes They don’tnecessarily have to remain limited within the confines of their homes.
Because the idea of home itself becomes complicated in the context of war—homes are broken,
homes are torn apart. Women can be free. Women do not have to look after their homes anymore.
But, one of the interesting things is that how do you militarize the bodies of women if women are
cross-culturally taught to be honorable and respectable and their bodies are meant to be humble, toalways show respect towards others? How do you militarize that body of a woman to be actually
carrying guns? This is part of the training, which often becomes an important part of radical
religious movements. Training is directed towards changing the movement and body of the women
to make it far more aggressive. Another part of the controversial debate that arises is around what
Erica mentioned, which is around female suicide bombing.
This idea of female suicide bombing is something thathas really caught the attention of international policy
makers because the fact that women could use theirbodies as bombs and kill themselves and blast and destroy
to rip apart their bodies and take the lives of people withthem, is something that is so torturous for any kind of
public imagination. And this has led to an interesting
emergence of the politics of female martyrdom. Religious
movements are now saying that women can also bemartyrs.
Women who have given their bodies for the nation, who have sacrificed their beautiful bodies forthe nation–that is something which is being increasingly glorified. But, the women themselves in
the run up to the actual act of female suicide bombing, and again, there is some literature which is
emerging on it, can use that act; the fact that they are going to make the ultimate sacrifice as people13࢔࣮ࢺ࣮࣭ࣜࢭࣥ
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know. It is not like the unpredictability of war, you are going as a soldier, you could come backalive if you are a soldier. But, with suicide bombing, you know you are going to die. That womenuse it as a powerful critic of local men. Saying that I am being forced to give my body to the nation
because the men could not serve the nation. The men could not save women. So, it is me, I have togo forward and do it. So, it is a particular form of emasculation which is related to female suicidebombing. But, having said that, there are new cultural discourses —that are emerging within theseradical movements—to support female suicide bombing. For example, there is the idea that it is lesslikely than a woman would be frisked because people would be unsuspicious of them. So, if you area woman and you are standing in a crowd, people wouldn’t look at you and think you are about toblast your body. But, what radical religious leaders are saying is that when women are willing to dothat, they become the brides of God. So, women are celebrated as brides. They are dressed up, they
are given spa treatments, they have make-up done, and they are considered to be beautiful. And, thiskind of radical change in the celebration of women is something that is being incorporated now inradical religious movements. Earlier, it was all about celebrating the men. Now, it is about, let’s
accommodate different ways in which we can celebrate these women.
From now on I would like to give you a flavor ofdifferent kinds of ethnographies which are emerging
especially in the context of anthropology, and I will begin
with a little bit of my own. I work with a radical Hindu
Nationalist Group in Mumbai and I especially look at
women’s involvement in this group.
One of the key debates which has emerged in thecontext of women’s participation in radical religious
movements, is that does it create solidarities between
women? In my area of research, for example, it does create solidarities within women. Even though
women join the movement, because they are Hindu nationalists and they are worried about thesurvival of the Hindu nation, they also coalesce around issues of rape and domestic violence andother kinds of sexual vulnerabilities. For example, the women who are part of this radical group, theShiv Sena, which I worked with, they distribute local small pocket knives for women travelling on
public transport. And, they say, if you are sexually harassed or you feel vulnerable towards rape,
feel free to use the knife. And, the party will actually save you. The organization will save you.
They will find a lawyer to protect you.
The Shiv Sena, the party, has also launched a smartphone application. If you download thesmartphone application and you ever feel sexually vulnerable or feel like you are about to be raped,
if you shake the phone hard enough, it starts ringing the local police station. So, you are a poor
woman and you are a woman at work and you are travelling on the train, and usually sexual
predators are predators who get on the train every day. They are always the same people. You know
who they are. And, when you feel vulnerable, you just start shaking your phone and you are rescued
immediately. So, these actually are solidarities which are built amongst women, in the context of14

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right wing activism. So, superficially they are saying yes, this is about serving the Hindu nation, but
on a very practical level, it is about women serving each other.
And then, there are also women who go against women when they join radical religious
movements.
For example, in the context of the US, there areanthropologists and other scholars who are looking at
Christian radical fundamentalists’ women. Women who
joined these Christian fundamentalist groups targeted
women who are pro-abortion. They are burning downclinics when women are having abortions or terminating
their pregnancies. They are attacking immigrant women,
women who are coming in from Mexico and from otherplaces, and seeking refuge in asylum. Mary Romero, forexample, in her work, says that there is this idea that Christian radical fundamentalist American
women are the perfect mothers. And, all these other women, the ones who are terminating theirpregnancies or coming in from Mexico are unfit mothers. So, America should be a land for the fit
mothers and fit mothers which come through their engagement with Christianity. Furthermore, youhave another example from Kashmir, which is in the northern part of India.
It is a very violent and conflict stricken area, and thereis this radical women’s Islamic group called Dukhtaran-eMillat, and they target women who are either prostitutes
or women who are taking part in Valentine’s Day—
because it’s a foreign import. “What is this idea ofmodernity?” “Why celebrate love?” “Your parents should
be organizing an arranged marriage for you”. “You should
not have the freedom to love”. So, these women goaround, smearing the faces of that women with black ink
and sort of ripping their clothes off in public and making them be revealed. This idea of keeping asociety clean is also becoming part of these radical religious movements. Therefore, there is aproblem with gender solidarities. When are women joining these movements showing solidarity
towards other women or targeting and attacking them? What are the radical movements which
generate solidarities and the ones which really don’t?
In conclusion, when it comes to women in radical movements and looking at it from theperspective of conventional gender studies, can we actually look at it as a brand of soft feminism? If
feminist trajectories have dominated gender studies for a long period of time, then a lot of themarkers of women joining radical religious movements actually tick boxes which are related to
traditional liberal feminism. For example, women joining these movements they seek to sustain
women’s aggression that women are united and they are aggressive and they are sort of fighting
patriarchy. They increase the public presence of women, women move outside their homes, they no15࢔࣮ࢺ࣮࣭ࣜࢭࣥ
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longer are segregated and home-bound and they are out.
And, carrying arms and engaging with radical movements
increases their self-pride. They contest notions ofsubmissive femininity in their body language, in theireveryday behavior. All kinds of femininity, which isrelated to submission to men, are challenged by women’s
participation.
Women learn how to protect themselves. In conditionsof war, it becomes important for them to protect theirbodies, so that they know how to use arms or develop comeback techniques which are aboutprotecting their bodies. And, one of the things which form a part of these movements is that they are
not really overtly challenging patriarchy. They are supporting patriarchy. They are going along with
it. They have temporary spaces which they are maneuvering to get some amount of freedom, butthey are not saying that they want a world with no men. They are not saying that they want a world
which is completely dominated by women. They want to still look at the broader ideology whichcomes with these movements. Parashar, who Erica mentioned before, talks about “creative
conformity”. And I thought this was an interesting thing to throw out there for discussion onwhether you agree with it or not. Parashar argues creative conformity explains best the actions andlived experiences of these women—the women I was talking about all this while.
And she says, ‘This “creative conformity” comprises actions that may not produce ends thatappear “feminist” within a secular-liberal framework, not necessarily align with the intentions of theagent, but nonetheless influence gendered norms about moral life’. Which is, women still manage tochallenge and transform conventional gender norms in mainstream society by participating inradical movements.

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