ABSTRACT
Any attempt to understand and compare the roles that women play in rebel groups and other armed insurgencies must first confront the issue of what “participation” truly means. This is a problem that is evident throughout literature on rebel groups and social movements more generally, but it is rarely addressed head-on. This chapter explores the ways in which national militaries and organized rebel groups determine who “counts” as a participant, and how they identify and define various participant roles. I compare these classifications to the experiences of women in conflict, as discussed in firsthand accounts and scholarly literature, and highlight how a past reliance on exclusionary definitions has minimized or erased women from scholarly investigations of conflict. My goal is to create a more inclusive typology of participation that can be used to determine how women contribute to armed rebel groups, and in what capacities they are active. Especially when discussing rebel groups, there are three issues to be
considered when attempting to define who is a participant or a member:
1 Differences in nature between national militaries and rebel groups. In many (though not all) cases, rebel groups are expected to be smaller and have fewer resources than national militaries. This means that we may expect to see less differentiation in roles as participants are expected to multi-task, performing multiple functions. Additionally, unlike national militaries, rebel groups have an added incentive to keep their membership structure opaque, making it as difficult as possible to determine who is or is not participating in the movement. This tactic may lead movements to depend on the labor and support of individuals, but without officially recognizing them as “participants.”
