Rethinking Gender and Violent Extremism

Within the field of countering violent extremism, research and interventions that do consider the role of gender in recruitment have mainly focused on women in violent extremism. However, men and boys are disproportionately recruited by and join extremist groups, and they are more likely to carry out extremist violence. With an increasing interest in shifting the narrative from countering  to “preventing” violent extremism, there is a need to look deeper into the reasons why men join such groups, and to examine how their gendered identities constructed in day-to-day lives are manipulated for recruitment purposes. Promundo, is an organization ...