Female Terrorism In International Politics

Since the September-11attacks, terrorism has become a hot issue ininternational politics and is endangering the peace and development of thewhole world. Women are traditionally thought to be gentle and loving peace.But in recent years, the rate of female involvement in terrorist activity increasedgreatly and female terrorism has attracted scholars’ attention. The studies on thetheory and practice of terrorism are of great quantity but those centered onfemale terrorism are still not sufficient enough. The previous theories ofterrorism cannot fully explain the female terrorism.There is a deep-rooted logic of "male-centered" in the traditionalinternational relations(IR) theories. The feminist scholars call that the femaleexperience should be added into the international relations analysis. Gender isthe core concept of feminism IR theory and exists in various feminism schools.The main points of gender include: the different characters and inequalitiesbetween males and females are all the results of social construction; gender canbecome a kind of power system. As a metaphor and symbolism, the gendercould be used to analyze the phenomenons in international politics because the two fields are consistent to some extent.The typical cases of female terrorism include the "Black Widow" inChechnya and “Army of Roses” in Palestine. In this paper, the author analyzesthese two cases from the perspective of gender. The analysis include three levelsin detail:actor, structure and ideology. The conclusion comes that gender playsan important role in female terrorism and it is meaningful to analyze the femaleterrorism from the perspective of gender. Women are constructed to be theweaker part in contract to men and used as tools to implement terrorismactivities.