Women on the Frontline: Rebel Group Ideology and Women’s Participation in Violent Rebellion

Despite the frequent participation of women in armed groups, few studies have sought to explain the variation in their roles across different rebellions, which is investigated in this article. It is argued that the political ideology a group adopts plays a central role in determining the extent of women’s participation, particularly their deployment in combat roles. Specifically, variations in women’s roles in armed groups are linked to differences in beliefs about gender hierarchies and gender-based divisions of labor inherent in the specific ideologies the groups adopt. To evaluate hypotheses drawn from these arguments a novel cross-sectional dataset on female combatants in a global sample of rebel organizations active between 1979 and 2009 is used.