Changing cultural and religious beliefs involved in such acts is challenging but perhaps having other women promote the value of women in family life can possibly strike an opening thru which the dialogue can continue for understanding why they follow such a path.

Best regards,

Debra

Terrorism as whole will be a problem for years to come because it is founded on radical ideologies. The challenge must be truly focused on education and a reasoned response.

Andrew: While there have been some news reports and some terrorist control organizations reporting this increase, which you define as “alarming,” it is instructive to look at the data that is available first to make an assessment of the claim.

This can be done using the Chicago Project on security & Threats (CPOST data), which is an open access online data base on suicide attacks. You can use the data to assess the trend in suicide bombings, and there is information on gender when gender is known.

Because this is just a preliminary examination, instead of doing each year separately, I grouped the data in 5 year intervals (e.g., starting in 1983-1987; the last segment is only 4 years, 2013-2016, because there is no 2017 data).

Numerically, here is what we see in terms of number of bombings by men and women

82-87: 24/8

88-92: 7/2

93-97: 32/12

98-02: 106/19

03-07: 791/39

08-12: 956/62

13-16: 493/79

Since the last set is only 4 years, we can, because this is an estimation, take the mean, and add it to the total just to get some idea over time to make the estimate period equal. This will not be exactly correct, since it assumes the increase between 2016-2017 is the same as the mean for 2013-2016. So we can estimate that

2013-2017 is 616 for men, and 99 for women.

Looking at the above, we see an increase, generally, over time, but a more recent decline for men since 2013, and a continued increase for women. And this sparks the alarm. BUT....there are two things we should examine.

First, the change in the trend over time. From 1998-2002 to 2013-2017, N of females increased from 19 to 99, or by a factor of 5.21. For males, the factor increase for the same period is 106 to 616, 5.81. So, the male increase in suicide bombing is greater than the female increase.

Second, we can look at this more closely over time using a sex ratio – that is, for each 5 year period, divide the number of male suicide bombers by the number of female suicide to get a sex ratio. Doing so we see the following:

1982-1987: 3.0

1988-1992: 3.5

1993-1997: 2.67

1998-2002: 5.58

2003-2007: 19.0

2008-2012: 15.4

2013-2017: 6.22 (this is with 2017 estimated)

So, with the sex ratio, over time we see what we can say is a fairly steady sex ratio from 1982-1997; from 1998-2012, the sex ratio rises, meaning there are more men than women who engage in suicide bombing. We see a decline in the sex ration in 2013-2017, BUT, that sex ratio is still higher than it was from 1982-2002, meaning that while the number of women increased (which we can tell from the count data), the sex ratio declined, the number of male suicide bombers increased more.

Now, all of that depends on the accuracy of the CPOST data.....but it doesn’t seem like this is an alarming increase, and that men still dominate, and the increase is greater for men over time than for women.

From a maternal feminist perspective, I would be thinking about the circumstances in which women, that take this path, do so. What is known about them? Are they in relationships with men who advocate these things? What are the power relations/structures in these relationships? Do they have children?

From the law enforcement and crime prevention angle, the following question should be asked;

Why women? In answering this question we need to take cognizance of the cultural and social expectations of women to be kind, gentle and sensitive. It is these socio-cultural norms and expectations of society from women that attracts terrorist and other criminally minded fellows to use women to catty out such heinous crimes. The police are more likely to suspect a man than a women. So its all about gender profiling in policing.Women are usually soft targets of law enforcement agents and terrorist and drug traffickers usually exploit this gap by using innocent and sometimes pretty looking women as a camouflage to commit crime. Its therefore a wake up call for crime prevention and control in the society. The law enforcement agents should understand the reasons behind the use of females.

First, it would appear from CPOST data (above) that there is no necessary proportional increase in female suicide bombers, although there may a general increase in suicide terrorism. Second, why assume women do it for any different reason from men? Is there really a specific problem to be addressed?