More Than Mere Victims: Women & Violent Extremism

In the public perception, women’s relationship to violent extremism is often limited to their role as the victims of Islamist terrorists. While the attacks on Pakistani schoolgirls by the Taliban, or the horrific kidnappings and sexual slavery perpetrated by groups like Boko Haram and the Islamic State, deserve the attention of the international community, some analysts believe that our preoccupation with jihadist violence against women may reinforce a worldview that pits the West against Muslim men. Focusing on Islam, they suggest, may also obscure a more complicated reality. After all, in recent years, we have witnessed massacres in Isla Vista, California, and Utoya Island, Norway, carried out by Western extremists who appear to have also been motivated by deep misogyny and by a perception that feminism had disempowered them.

What, exactly, is the role of women in relationship to violent extremism? Does misogyny, on an ideological level, actually drive violent extremism, or are women merely an easy focal point for the angry and disaffected young men for whom extremism seems to hold its greatest appeal? And how can we make sense of the increasing numbers of women who are themselves joining terrorist groups, or of the Islamic State’s recent proclamation that jihad is a duty for women, too?

Please join New America and the Royal Norwegian Consulate General and the Permanent Mission of Norway to the UN as we discuss the complex connection between misogyny and extremist violence as well as the changing roles of women, both within extremist groups and in the fight against them. A reception will follow the discussion.

Follow the discussion online using #NANYC and by following @NewAmericaNYC, @NorwayUS, and @NorwayUN.

Introduction:

Anne-Marie Slaughter
President and CEO, New America
@SlaughterAM

Welcoming Remarks:

Her Excellency Solveig Horne
Minister of Children, Equality, and Social Inclusion, Kingdom of Norway
@SolveigHorne

Participants:

Alexis Okeowo
Contributing writer, The New Yorker
@alexis_ok

Peter Bergen
Vice President and Director, International Security, Future of War, and
Fellows Programs, New America
Author, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11 to Abottabad
@peterbergencnn

Mona Eltahawy
Author, Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs A Sexual Revolution
@monaeltahawy

Åsne Seierstad
Author, One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacres in Norway
@AsneSeierstad

Lydia Polgreen
Deputy International Editor, The New York Times
@lpolgreen