Why do women join IS? A critique of gendered assumptions about women’s motivations

Women who join the so-called ‘Islamic State’ (IS) in Syria have garnered considerable public interest in Europe since the summer of 2014, when first reports about women leaving Europe for IS-controlled territory emerged. In this blog post, Jennifer Philippa Eggert contrasts commonly held assumptions about women’s motivations to join IS with what recent research tells us about their actual reasons. She then looks at what the dichotomy between the two says about our perceptions of women in general and Muslim women in particular.