Women Insurgents, Rebel Organization Structure and Sustaining the Rebellion: The Case of Kurdistan Workers’ Party

Security Studies

How do women insurgents affect rebel organizations’ structure and survivability? Scholars acknowledge the importance of organization-level dynamics and unit composition for conflict outcomes. However, our understanding of how gender-diverse cadres impact rebel survivability remains limited. I examine the mechanisms through which women sustain the armed conflict. I analyze micro-organizational dynamics of rebellion through a qualitative case study of the Kurdish armed movement in Turkey between 1982-2015, based on the official archives of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. I show that women insurgents enable tactical diversity, aid the organization’s coup-proofing strategy against factions, and mobilize domestic and international audiences. Women contribute most to their organization during crises and due to exploitation of gender inequalities. Analyzing the relationship between gender dynamics, group structure, and evolving rebel strategies, this study shows that the gender of the membership is an important factor influencing rebel survivability.

Women’s Role in Violence and the UN Women, Peace, Security Agenda

Alternative Politics

The UN’s Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda emphasizes women’s victimhood and peacemaking roles. However, women participate in two-thirds of armed movements and affect conflict outcomes in unique gendered ways. This article argues that excluding female perpetrators from the WPS agenda generates new insecurities for them and broader societies. By highlighting women’s contribution to perpetuating conflict, I propose a framework to incite policymakers to view women’s empowerment as a mainstream security concern and implement policies aligned with the goals of the UN WPS Agenda. First, I explore reasons to avoid reinforcing gender norms that portray women as victims and peacemakers. These reasons encompass assessing: 1) women’s contributions to armed organizations, 2) their exclusion from post-conflict rehabilitation programs, 3) the limited visibility of human rights violations by women and the underrepresentation of male civilians as victims, and 4) “saving vulnerable women” rhetoric as a justification for Western power involvement. Then, I examine gender inequality as a fundamental cause enabling these factors, underscoring the need to regard gender inequality and traditional gender norms as central security concerns. 

Gender Norms & Rebel Survivability

Existing research demonstrated that women participate in two-thirds of rebel groups in various roles, yet little is known about the conditions under which female recruitment can benefit rebel groups. I argue that groups with female combatants are more likely to survive longer than all-male groups, and that female combatants’ impact on conflict duration is conditional on the prevalence of traditional gender norms. I conduct survival analysis using a global sample of rebel groups from 1979 to 2009 at the macro-level, and at the micro-level, I leverage the district-level variation on gender norms within a single conflict using large-N data from Kurdish Armed Insurgency. The results suggest that female members’ advantage in sustaining the rebellion is only salient in societies with restrictive gender norms regarding women’s participation in public life. In contrast, female members do not appear to contribute to rebel group survivability through unique gendered ways in societies embracing more gender-egalitarian norms. The results have important research and policy implications highlighting the need to understand gender disparities as a mainstream security issue.

Quotas and Cues: Public Responses to International Support for Women’s Political Representation in Saudi Arabia

How do international and domestic endorsements influence public support for women’s political representation in authoritarian, patriarchal contexts? This paper investigates how various actors—including international organizations, regional bodies, INGOs, Western powers, and local religious authorities—shape public opinion toward gender quotas in Saudi Arabia, an autocracy with extreme gender inequality. Using an original online survey experiment, we find that endorsement from the Organization of Islamic Cooperation significantly increases support for women’s political inclusion - more so than local religious leaders. In contrast, endorsements from the UN, U.S., and INGOs slightly reduce support, though these effects are statistically insignificant. These findings question assumptions about the universal legitimacy of global actors and underscore the often-overlooked influence of regional institutions in promoting gender norms. Bridging literatures on international organizations, public opinion, and gender politics, the study shows how actor credibility and sociocultural alignment shape the domestic reception of international women’s rights agendas.

International Status Concerns and Gender Attitudes

Women’s rights are an important dimension of international status: International audiences tend to favor countries that improve the standing of women, and policymakers leverage these predispositions to enhance their countries’ standing. Yet, there is scant evidence on whether international status concerns affect domestic attitudes. Using experimental evidence from Turkey and historical case studies, we show that status concerns shape public attitudes towards women. Our results indicate that status concerns improve attitudes toward women both when status is explicitly tied to women’s standing and, sometimes, even when it is not—especially among men, who react more strongly. The case studies illustrate that international status concerns played a key role in changing public perceptions, aiding women’s movements in Turkey, Britain, Greece, and Russia. These findings show that global hierarchies resonate with domestic audiences, and status anxieties can bridge foreign and domestic spheres in shaping support for gender reforms.

Strategic Frameworks for Women’s Rights: 

Evidence from Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey

Women’s rights in MENA remain highly contested. Legal reforms and international commitments often outpace public endorsement, leaving progress fragile and vulnerable to backlash. Appeals that mobilize some groups can be reframed as identity threats to others, making how rights are justified, and to whom, a central political question. We use preregistered, nationally representative survey experiments in Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt to test six common advocacy frames for gender equality—universal rights, religion, nationalism, maternity, international status, and economic development—across family, economic, and political domains.  To account for multiple comparison issue, we estimate treatment effects and their pre-specified heterogeneity using a Bayesian multilevel ordered-logit model with country- and domain-varying parameters. The results show that no frame generates universal gains. Rights-based appeals yield modest but steady support, while identity-laden frames produce sharper but polarized shifts. Religion and maternity mobilize traditionalists in public life but reinforce private hierarchy. Family domain proves the most resistant, politics the most elastic. Persuasion is thus domain- and context-bound, heterogeneous, and double-edged: The same frames that broaden women’s public inclusion may entrench subordination at home. These findings highlight the limits of country-level averages and the need to target receptive subgroups.