Can a gendered approach improve responses to violent extremism?

The report argues that terrorism and violent extremism are highly gendered activities and that PVE and CT responses are more sustainable and effective when they promote gender equality and women's empowerment. It identifies gaps in global policy implementation, highlights the gendered impact of CT human rights violations, and warns against the instrumentalisation of women in PVE programming. The authors recommend a shift toward context-specific, human rights-compliant strategies that engage both men and women as equal actors, particularly through a focus on parenting.

• Global policy frameworks, such as the UN Plan of Action for Preventing Violent Extremism, acknowledge the importance of gender but often lack practical guidance on overcoming structural inequalities or providing tools to monitor the gender-mainstreaming of PVE efforts.
• Counter-terrorism (CT) measures frequently result in human rights violations that have distinct gendered impacts, including the use of detained women as bargaining chips and the extraction of confessions through torture or sexual violence.
• In Nigeria, military CT operations have resulted in significant casualties among males, with reports of over 1,000 extrajudicial killings of boys and men between 2013 and 2014, and over 7,000 deaths in military detention since 2011.
• PVE programming often risks 'instrumentalising' women by viewing them solely as tools to reach other targets (such as husbands or children) based on stereotypes of their roles as mothers or wives, rather than treating them as autonomous agents.
• The effectiveness of PVE varies by local gender dynamics; for example, while mothers are seen as key influencers in Indonesia and Malaysia, fathers and male relatives hold more dominant decision-making power in families associated with al-Shabaab in Kenya.
• Extremist groups exploit gender stereotypes for operational gain, such as using women for suicide attacks because they are perceived as non-threatening and more likely to bypass security checks.
• Sexual violence against men and boys is a significant but overlooked issue in both extremist tactics and CT operations, including the practice of 'bacha bazi' (boy play) in Afghanistan which some US forces were reportedly told to ignore.
• There is a critical lack of empirical data and gender-specific metrics to evaluate the impact of PVE and CT programming, with some agencies assuming that gender analysis is unnecessary for programs targeting men.

APA

Ndung‘u, I., & Shadung, M. (2017). Can a gendered approach improve responses to violent extremism? Institute for Security Studies. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/aitwr-5.pdf

Chicago

Ndung‘u, Irene, and Mothepa Shadung. Can a gendered approach improve responses to violent extremism? Institute for Security Studies, 2017. https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/aitwr-5.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Ndung‘u |first1=Irene |last2=Shadung |first2=Mothepa |title=Can a gendered approach improve responses to violent extremism? |publisher=Institute for Security Studies |date=September 2017 |url=https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/aitwr-5.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{ndungu2017can, author = {Ndung‘u, Irene and Shadung, Mothepa}, title = {{Can a gendered approach improve responses to violent extremism?}}, institution = {Institute for Security Studies}, year = {2017}, month = sep, url = {https://issafrica.s3.amazonaws.com/site/uploads/aitwr-5.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }