Contesting Counterterrorism: Constructing women through Britain’s post-9/11 policy and practice

Women have long been involved and continue to participate in terrorism across a range of roles, and for a variety of reasons (Bloom 2011, Sjoberg & Gentry 2011). Nevertheless, prevailing counterterrorism policy responses often fail to account for the complex ways women are recruited into or motivated to participate in terrorism. As a result, the gendered design and outcomes of counterterrorism responses remain poorly understood by policymakers and practitioners. Consequently, existing counterterrorism policy and practice integrating women presents a ‘gendered paradox of inclusion’ where efforts to be inclusive of women’s perspectives and experiences have instead resulted in the (re)production of new modes of exclusion. The proposed project, Contesting Counterterrorism: Constructing women through Britain’s post-9/11 policy and practice, will examine how this gendered paradox of inclusion emerges in relation to the pillars of Britain’s longstanding counterterrorism strategy CONTEST. It will show how these modes of exclusion manifest in various ways and will explore the impact of gendered strategies of inclusion on outcomes of CONTEST and on the women and communities involved. The project asks: what are the mechanisms, strategies and processes through which women become integrated into counterterrorism? How are the policies and practices of CONTEST gendered, and how are they sustained, challenged, and evolved? How do persistent gender stereotypes about women and terrorism inform the ways that counterterrorism policy and practice has been designed and implemented, and with what consequences? To address these questions, I interviewed officials across multiple UK government departments and agencies and civil society organisations involved in making and practising counterterrorism, and analysed hundreds of British government policy documents on counterterrorism over a twenty year period. This research observes that while there has been a conscious effort to integrate women more directly within different aspects of counterterrorism policy and practice, these modes of inclusion continue to reproduce gender stereotypes resulting in ineffective and sometimes dangerous counterterrorism practices that neither mitigate, nor understand women’s involvement in terrorism. However, evidence of gender-sensitive evolution emerges at the individual level, demonstrating that change is possible, but it is slow and localised within departments and organisations. Contesting counterterrorism makes a unique contribution to revealing how gendered norms, rules, discourses and practices inform and impact UK counterterrorism policymaking. By shedding light on the processes involved in making and practising counterterrorism in gendered ways, I contribute to feminist thinking on security, violence and governance. My findings suggest that efforts to integrate true gender sensitivity in the design, implementation and evaluation of counterterrorism must go beyond the idea that integrating women is sufficient. Instead, we must transform the gendered, racialised norms and structures that underpin the UK government’s security culture more systematically. This Fellowship enables me to build on and develop my doctoral research into a monograph and a series of articles, and to disseminate my findings to policymakers, practitioners, fellow academics, NGOs and wider public audiences working on questions of gender and security. Through targeted uptake activities, I hope to inform the design and implementation of future counterterrorism policy and practice that goes beyond superficially including women in policy responses, and instead strives to develop an approach to counterterrorism that is rooted in principles of human rights and gender equality. This approach would prioritise the protection of people and communities rather than contribute towards their securitisation.