The presence of women combatants on the battlefield--especially in large numbers--strikes many observers as a notable departure from the historical norm. Yet women have played a significant active role in many contemporary armed rebellions. Over recent decades, numerous resistance movements in many regions of the globe have deployed thousands of female fighters in combat. In Female Fighters, Reed M. Wood explains why some rebel groups deploy women in combat while others exclude women from their ranks, and the strategic implication of this decision. Examining a vast original dataset on female fighters in over 250 rebel organizations, Wood argues rebel groups can gain considerable strategic advantages by including women fighters. Drawing on women increases the pool of available recruits and helps ameliorate resource constraints. Furthermore, the visible presence of female fighters often becomes an important propaganda tool for domestic and international audiences. Images of women combatants help raise a group's visibility, boost local recruitment, and aid the group's efforts to solicit support from transnational actors and diaspora communities. However, Wood finds that, regardless of the wartime resource challenges they face, religious fundamentalist rebels consistently resist utilizing female fighters. A rich, data-driven study, Female Fighters presents a systematic, comprehensive analysis of the impact women's participation has on organized political violence in the modern era.

This book explores the why and the how of women’s participation in armed struggle, and challenges preconceived assertions about women and violence, providing both a historic and a contemporary focus. The volume is about women who have participated in armed conflict as members of an armed group, trained in military action, with different tasks within the conflict. The chapters endeavor to make women’s own voices heard, to discover the untold stories of women as perpetrators and facilitators of military violence, and the authors do this through the use of personal interviews and the study of primary documents. The work widens the geographical perspective of feminist security studies to discover in what ways the historical, political, and social context has motivated the women to participate in military action, and presents new case study data from Germany, Ukraine, Turkey, Israel, Palestine, Cameroon, India, the Philippines, Vietnam and Latin America. Temporally, the chapters cover almost two centuries, from the late 19th century to the present day, touching upon a wide variety of examples of armed conflict, from wars of independence to the Second World War. Bringing together approaches from politics, history, anthropology and area studies, the chapters are informed by the fundamental insights of feminist research and address such pivotal questions as hegemonic masculinity in the armed forces and the relation between women’s armed violence and female agency. This book will be of much interest to students and researchers in gender and security studies, armed conflict and history.

In the numerous armed conflicts that are tearing the African continent apart, young women are participants and carry guns alongside their male comrades-in-arms. Challenging the stereotype of women in African wars as victims only, this issue of the Nordic Africa Institute Policy Dialogues shows how in modern African wars women have often been as active as men. Female fighters are victimized, yet they are not mere victims. Girls and young women who volunteer to fight often possess quite considerable strength and independence. Programmes for disarming, demobilizing, and reintegrating former fighters must be based on better understanding of the range of women's roles and experiences in war and post-war settings in order to act in a gender-sensitive way and to empower this group of women in the aftermath of war.

The presence of women combatants on the battlefield—especially in large numbers—strikes many observers as a notable departure from the historical norm. Yet women have played a significant active role in many contemporary armed rebellions. Over recent decades, numerous resistance movements in many regions of the globe have deployed thousands of female fighters in combat. In Female Fighters, Reed M. Wood explains why some rebel groups deploy women in combat while others exclude women from their ranks, and the strategic implications of this decision. Examining a vast original dataset on female fighters in over 250 rebel organizations, Wood argues rebel groups can gain considerable strategic advantages by including women fighters. Drawing on women increases the pool of available recruits and helps ameliorate resource constraints. Furthermore, the visible presence of female fighters often becomes an important propaganda tool for domestic and international audiences. Images of women combatants help raise a group’s visibility, boost local recruitment, and aid the group’s efforts to solicit support from transnational actors and diaspora communities. However, Wood finds that, regardless of the wartime resource challenges they face, religious fundamentalist rebels consistently resist utilizing female fighters. A rich, data-driven study, Female Fighters presents a systematic, comprehensive analysis of the impact women’s participation has on organized political violence in the modern era.

Why do women go to war? Despite the reality that female combatants exist the world over, we still know relatively little about who these women are, what motivates them to take up arms, how they are utilized by armed groups, and what happens to them when war ends. This book uses three case studies to explore variation in women’s participation in nonstate armed groups in a range of contemporary political and social contexts: the civil war in Ukraine, the conflicts involving Kurdish groups in the Middle East, and the civil war in Colombia. In particular, the authors examine three important aspects of women’s participation in armed groups: mobilization, participation in combat, and conflict cessation. In doing so, they shed light on women’s pathways into and out of nonstate armed groups. They also address the implications of women’s participation in these conflicts for policy, including postconflict programming. This is an accessible and timely work that will be a useful introduction to another side of contemporary conflict.

The debate about the role of women in war, violent conflict and the military is not only a long and ongoing one; it is also a heated and controversial one. The contributions to this anthology come from experts in the field who approach the topic from various angles thus offering different and, at times, diverging perspectives. The reader will therefore gain in-depth insight into the most important aspects and positions in the debate.

Women have always participated in armed conflict, most often as active supporters of the armies they have followed. Some women, usually the wives of soldiers, served as nurses, laundresses, cooks, and seamstresses. Other women chose active participation in battle, including the famed Molly Pitcher. Mary Hays McCauly earned this moniker during the Battle of Monmouth in 1778 when she provided pitchers of water and medical care to members of the Continental Army fighting the British. After shrapnel struck her husband, McCauly took up his position as a cannoneer so that the artillery crew could continue to fight. Gen George Washington rewarded her bravery by making her a noncommissioned officer.* The story of Molly Pitcher symbolizes the realities of women and war. War has always affected women to some capacity despite civilized society's best attempts to protect the gentler sex from war's brutality. Yet, despite Molly Pitcher's successes on the battlefield, which included picking up an injured soldier to save him from charging British soldiers, American culture has traditionally deprecated female participation in war. In most cultures, even today, a woman engaged in combat operations represented an anathema, such as the reactions to Jeanne d'Arc by political and religious leaders. History, therefore, has either completely dismissed female contributions and participation in armed conflicts or relegated their participation to scandalous supporting roles, such as prostitutes or pillow-friendly spies. The reality is women have made significant contributions in military conflicts, and their role continues to expand in the modern era. This paper reviews four case studies that demonstrate the variety of ways women have participated in modern armed conflict and explores whether current US laws and policies excluding women from combat remain valid or need to be amended. Each case study examines three principal facets of female participation in combat: context, motivations and inspirations, and the actual contributions made by these women in combat operations. Two case studies, one on World War II Soviet pilots and the other on modern Americans, follow the more traditional explanation of armed conflict and focus on women integrated into military organizations involved in wars. The other two case studies, including one on female resistance fighters in World War II Europe and another on female terrorists and insurgents, represent the asymmetric aspects female participation often provides during conflicts. The first case study examines the women involved in resistance operations throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. Contextually, many of the women presented in this case study had experienced or had close family to live through World War I. That experience evoked strong emotional motivations for many of the women profiled and often resulted in intense hatred of their enemies, the German Nazis. Due to the loss of family members and friends and with the emotions provoked by the occupation, many women believed that they had no other choice but to resist. In their minds resistance represented defense of their families, friends, culture, and nations. While most of these women began their resistance activities as lookouts and messengers, many went on to conduct insurgent paramilitary operations against the Nazi occupying forces.