Motherhood as State-Building Within Violent Extremist Groups

For proposed panel 5. Women and violent politics: This paper offers a comparative analysis of performances of motherhood by women in the Islamic State (IS), Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Boko Haram (BH). Each group is perceived as a Community of Practice, emerging from a specific context. Motherhood is conceptualised as fulfilling a state-building role, embodied through the bearing and raising of children. By analysing how performances of motherhood are learnt and gendered, I examine the influence gender norms have on constructing, allocating, and performing roles within violent extremist groups. The paper argues that a series of group-level factors inform how individual women perform the motherhood role. These include variations in the construction of gender norms, as derived from ideological commitments; decisions taken regarding how the group can best achieve its aims; the types of roles considered appropriate for women to engage with; and the communication of gender norms to women interacting with the group. External pressures placed on the group may also alter the way a role is performed. By examining how female members of IS, ETA, the IRA, and BH differ in the way they perform the role of mother, the paper analyses how extremist violence is gendered, and the influence gender has on role performance and allocation. These areas have not been considered in significant analytical depth before, thus doing so offers insight into why apparently similar roles are performed differently by women between and within groups.