ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores empirical analyses of women's participation in direct combat and logistical or ideological support they provide in militant wars as planners and perpetrators. It discusses ethno-nationalist political movements with a theoretical framework for engaging with gender roles and experiences and aspirations of women. It reveals the women use a range of tactics and are engaged at the logistical, ideological and even combatant levels of a militant project. It addresses the question of how memory serves to erase the participation of women in wars and political violence. It explains feminist international relations (IR) and critical war and /security studies and argues that feminists are neither serving their own scholarly interests nor achieving the political goals of feminism by contributing to the processes that silence the voices of women engaged in violent militant activities, and that ultimately erase women from war narratives.
