Women and Suicide Terrorism

• In Event: Terrorism

Abstract

Existing studies argue that suicide bombers, the most destructive human weapons, set out to destroy hard targets (i.e., soldiers and military bases) rather than soft targets (i.e., civilians in market places or houses of worship). This argument, however, requires revisions when taking gender differences into consideration. This study contends that for strategic and tactical reasons, women are less likely to strike well-defended, hard targets, but more likely to engage in attacks against civilian, soft targets. By performing a battery of statistical analyses on a sample of 6,127 suicide bombing incidents during the period from 1980 to 2016, this study shows strong and consistent evidence that, compared to men, women increasingly undertake suicide missions against soft over hard targets. Accordingly, the counterterrorism community needs to find an effective way to meet the new security challenges created by female bombers.

Author

• Seung-Whan Choi, University of Illinois, Chicago