Are Women Not Terrorists?

Abstract: This bachelor thesis critically explores and deconstructs the commonplace position that a terrorist is typically a radical man rather than a woman. This stereotypical construction is explored in the context of the United Nations’ (UN) Counter-Terrorism Strategy through the perspective of Feminist Security Studies and Critical Terrorism Studies. The aim of this piece of work is to identify and shed light on gender stereotypes within the Strategy. Through the employment of Quantitative Content Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis, gender stereotypes are found in both the manifest and latent discourses of the Strategy. The stereotypes in the Strategy are consistent with the constitution of women as Beautiful Souls (Elshtain 1982) and the Terrorist as male individuals from the Arab-Muslim world. As Beautiful Soul women are assumed to be in need of protection, contrarily men from the Arab-Muslim world are described to be the ones to protect from. This study is based on a social constructivist view on science; the wordings of terrorism stereotypes are interpreted as social constructions, some of which are explicitly referred to in the key materials analyzed below and others are silently constructed within the text.