Mondani, Hernan , Rostami, Amir , Askanius, Tina , Edling, Christofer & Jerzy Sarnecki | 2021
Nordic Council of Ministers, 54 pages
Women have generally been treated as “side shows” in the literature on war,
terrorism and violent extremism and have thus been given scant scholarly attention.
In mainstream media discourse, when the role of women is in fact raised, they tend
to be framed as unwitting, passive agents or brainwashed victims pulled into violent
extremist movements only through the relations of their husbands, boyfriends, or
fathers.
This report presents a quantitative assessment of women in violent extremism in
contemporary Sweden. Specifically, we study women in violent Islamic extremism,
violent far-right extremism, and violent far-left extremism. The analyses are based
on data compiled from Swedish governmental registers on crime, mental health,
education, child welfare intervention, labor market attachment, and information
from the Swedish Police and Swedish Security Service about known affiliation to
violent extremist milieus.
