1st Edition
Gender and the Governance of Terrorism and Violent Extremism
This book brings together a variety of innovative perspectives on the inclusion of gender in the governance of (counter-)terrorism and violent extremism.
Several global governance initiatives launched in recent years have explicitly sought to integrate concern for gender equality and gendered harms into efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism (CT/CVE). As a result, commitments to gender-sensitivity and gender equality in international and regional CT/CVE initiatives, in national action plans and at the level of civil society programming, ´have become a common aspect of the multilevel governance of terrorism and violent extremism. In light of these developments, there is a need for more systematic analysis of how concerns about gender are being incorporated in the governance of (counter-)terrorism and violent extremism and how it has affected (gendered) practices and power relations in counterterrorism policy-making and implementation.
Ranging from the processes of global and regional integration of gender into the governance of terrorism, via the impact of the shift on government responses to the return of foreign fighters, to state and civil society-led CVE programming and academic discussions, the essays engage with the origins and dynamics behind recent shifts which bring gender to the forefront of the governance of terrorism. This book will be of great value to researchers and scholars interested in gender, governance and terrorism.
The chapters in this book were originally published in Critical Studies on Terrorism.
Introduction: Gender and the governance of terrorism and violent extremism
Ann-Kathrin Rothermel and Laura J. Shepherd
1. Gender at the crossroads: the role of gender in the UN’s global counterterrorism reform at the humanitarian-development-peace nexus
Ann-Kathrin Rothermel
2. Gender, race and Orientalism: the governance of terrorism and violent extremism in global and local perspective
Penny Griffin and Maryam Khalid
3. Finding the right mix: re-evaluating the road to gender-equality in countering violent extremism programming
Jessica White
4. Beyond instrumentalisation: gender and agency in the prevention of extreme violence in Kenya
Elizabeth Mesok
5. Logics of care and control: governing European "returnees" from Iraq and Syria
Katherine E. Brown and F. Nubla Mohamed
6. O sister, where art thou? Assessing the limits of gender mainstreaming in preventing and countering violent extremism in Mali
Laura Berlingozzi
7. Lived realities and local meaning-making in defining violent extremism in Kenya: implications for preventing and countering violent extremism in policy and practice
Fathima Azmiya Badurdeen, Sahla Aroussi and Michaelina Jakala
8. Anti-feminism, gender and the far-right gap in C/PVE measures
Christine Agius, Alexandra Edney-Browne, Lucy Nicholas and Kay Cook
9. Interrogating the "incel menace": assessing the threat of male supremacy in terrorism studies
Julia R. DeCook and Megan Kelly
10. Governing the suicide bomber: reading terrorism studies as governmentality
Claire Lyness
11. "Unthinking" sexual violence in a neoliberal era of spectacular terror
Marysia Zalewski and Anne Sisson Runyan
12. White feminism and the governance of violent extremism
Laura J. Shepherd
Biography
Ann-Kathrin Rothermel is PhD candidate at the University of Potsdam, research fellow with the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism (IRMS), and academic advisor to the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb). Her research focuses on gender in online radicalization processes and transnational counterterrorism governance.
Laura J. Shepherd is Professor of International Relations at the University of Sydney and a former Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2018-2022). Her primary research focuses on the United Nations Security Council’s Women, Peace and Security agenda, and attendant dynamics of gender, violence, and security governance.
