Women, the “Secret Weapon” of Modern Warfare?

Abstract

In her essay, Kelly Oliver argues that women’s violence is given more media attention than men’s violence, not just because it is less prominent or because there are not as many women soldiers or militants than men. Rather, she maintains that traditional stereotypes of women as “black widow spiders” or “femme fatales” who use their pretty smiles and their sex appeal to lure men to their deaths play into media representations of women’s involvement in recent military action. Because of the way that stereotypes of women’s sexuality as inherently dangerous and women’s violence as more threatening than men’s, the issue of women’s participation in the theatre of war is complex. She examines how, when military leaders or jihadists use women strategically as weapons, and when the media figures them as weapons in their very presence in the theatre of war, women’s agency in violence is complicated.