ISSN: 2222-6990
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Traditionally, terrorism and violent extremism (VE) are synonymous with male perpetrators, although women are inevitably and adversely affected by such illegalities. Women are increasingly involved as active supporters not only by fundraising terrorist activities but also as lone wolf suicide bombers. Despite the awareness of women’s participation, and the detrimental impact of such crimes on women, the lack of understanding of the causes of Malaysian women’s radicalisation and their political agency has remained under-researched. The understanding of such rationales and agency is crucial to enable the government to adopt the appropriate PVE/CVE approach. Given the lack of academic research on this issue, this paper aims at examining the understanding of VE, the role and the causal factors of women’s radicalisation and their implications on the visibility of women’s agency and gender equality in Malaysia. This research employs qualitative methodology, in which the primary data was collected through semi-structured interviews with fifteen respondents. The data triangulation was obtained from focus group discussions with experts from relevant ministries and universities. The data is analysed and interpreted using Atlas.Ti software. The findings revealed that the drivers toward women’s radicalisation are varied, and the lack of visibility of women’s political agency in the analyses of Malaysian women’s participation in VE is unfortunate. Such a situation calls into question not only the future role of women as active actors in PVE/CVE but also the promotion of gender equality as envisaged by the UN Security Council Resolutions 2178 and 2242 and SDG No 5 and 16.
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In-Text Citation: (Hamin et al., 2021)
To Cite this Article: Hamin, Z., Kamaruddin, S., Rani, A. R. A., Mohamad, A. M., & Rosli, W. R. W. (2021). When Violent Extremism is No Longer a Man’s World: Some Evidence From Malaysia. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 11(9), 479–488.
Copyright: © 2021 The Author(s)
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