Search Here

Similar to male terrorists, women terrorists too are highly educated, employed, and trained in their native country where they execute their terrorist acts, a recent research conducted by Lancaster University in the United Kingdom and published in the American Psychological Association found.

The study comes as a contradiction to the popular previous stereotype which views female terrorists as isolated, uneducated women belonging to a foreign country. Authors of the new study say that this streotype has not been supported with evidence.

"We discovered that some of the popular notions about female terrorists do not reflect what has occurred in the past," said the study's lead author, Karen Jacques, PhD. "A more realistic description is helpful because it provides insights into the social dynamics that might promote an individual's involvement in terrorist activities."

After examining archival biographical data from multiple sources on 222 female and 269 male terrorists, Jacques and her co-author, Paul J Taylor, PhD found that majority of both female and male terrorists were between the age group of 16 and 35 years. Most of them were native residents and employed. They also were educated through a secondary school and had not been involved in crimes in the past. In addition, none of these terrorists had converted from any other religion.

"A surprising finding was that, unlike for other criminals, there were very few instances of previous involvement in criminal activity among both females and males," said Jacques. "This could be because they were unwilling to confess to other crimes, because criminality could attract authorities' undue attention to potential terrorists, or the possibility that having a criminal career is not a significant precursor to terrorism."

Another aspect revealed during this study was that more than a third of these terrorists had prior terrorist connections through their family members. However, out of these, more than 50 percent of them indicated that family connections were not the reason for their terrorist activities.