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News media reporting on female political violence invariably portrays the perpetrators as duped, naïve and exploited, acting from personal rather than political motivations, as anomalous intruders in a masculine realm and de-feminized as monsters. By diminishing their agency, the challenge that women’s violence poses to the gendered national order is contained.
Drawing on five comparative case studies spanning more than 70 years of militant campaigns against the UK and France, this book interrogates how media representations of politically violent women are shaped by gender, race, religion, class and geography. It considers how women’s political violence is framed, what influences these portrayals, and what ideological work they perform. In answering these questions, the book reveals how these representations operate as a battleground where the nation’s gendered boundaries are defined and defended, and the national order is reproduced.
Constructing Female Terrorism brings important, carefully researched evidence from previously under-explored cases to the question of the public reaction to and reproduction of women’s engagement in political violence, with novel theoretical findings. A must-read in the field.
— Laura Sjoberg, Professor of International Relations, University of Oxford
Ariane Bogain is Senior Lecturer in French and Politics at Northumbria University. Her research critically investigates the terrorism discourse in France, focusing on legitimisation of counter-terrorism measures by state authorities, the construction of national identity as a reaction to terrorist attacks, and the role of gender in the construction of French men and women who joined ISIS.
Leonie B. Jackson is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Northumbria University. She is the author of What is Counterterrorism For? (2024), The Monstrous and the Vulnerable: Framing British Jihadi Brides (2021) and Islamophobia in Britain: The Making of a Muslim Enemy (2018).
Introduction
1. Anti-colonial campaigns: The Kenya Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) 1952–60 and Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN) 1954–62
2. Separatist political violence: The Provisional IRA 1969–97 and the National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC) 1976–present
3. Leftist political violence: women of The Angry Brigade (1970–72) and Action directe (1979–87)
4. Jihadist political violence: post-2001 jihadist campaigns in the UK and France
6. Ultra-right political violence in the UK and France in the twenty-first century
6. At the border of order
Conclusion