The depiction of women and their role in religious Islamic terrorism within the territory of the Russian Federation (2000 - present)

The gender issue and gender inequality in particular is considered one of the major problems in the changing modern world especially in the discourse of security. Women and children are often the main target of many forms of violence and abuse in national and local conflicts. Military confrontation with non-state actors has clearly showed that the issue of women in terrorist organizations has come to the foreground for the Russian Federation as early as in the early 2000s. Islamic religious groups of the North Caucasus, which have been known for their idea of patriarchal society, shape a stereotypical image of women which gives an opportunity for radical Islamic terrorist organizations to take advantage of women manipulating them and forcing certain behavioral patterns on them (the phenomenon of female suicide bombers). Another critical issue is consciously motivated radicalization political views by those women in order to spread separatism not only among religious society but among secular society as well. The main aim of this article is the analysis of the depictions of women and their role in the context of the key security threat of the modern society that is international terrorism. The idea that international politics is a male-dominated discipline has been altered making the world search for new ways of addressing global security challenges. This can only be made by re-evaluating women's traditional roles in traditional societies; addressing the issue of religious laws dominating over secular laws; reducing the influence of armed conflicts on women and children being recruited to join extremist groups and terrorist organizations. The work is based on the open sources from the news, anti-extremism services, Federal Service of National Safety, which include female terrorists' personal data, interviews with their relatives and court reports. The analysis includes the data about 91 women, who were in some way engaged in terroristic acts on the territory of the Russian Federation since 2000. Such complex analysis, along with the methods of content analysis allowed for more substantial conclusions to Russian researchers who studied the age of female terrorists, the reasons for their radicalism, geography of female terrorism in the Russian Federation, as well as to observe how the depiction of female terrorist evolved.

gender, female terrorism, female suicide bombers, terrorism, extremism, terrorist attack, Islamism, Islamic terrorism