Abstract: 

Although the ultimate objective of jihadi organizations is to establish their caliphates, only a handful of them (and only in very recent years) have actually attempted to claim territories and establish their own so called states (caliphates). In tandem with the rise of state building jihadi organizations such as ISIS, and despite the traditional restrictions of the Islamic jurisprudence on women’s participation in jihadi activities, the level of women’s incorporation into jihadi organizations is growing rapidly in both number and variation of roles.  However, this increase in women’s incorporation (both in numbers and types of roles) is not proportionately distributed among all jihadi organizations.

Based on empirical data collected through conducting fieldwork in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and along Syrian borders in southern Turkey, this presentation proposes a new twofold typology of jihadi organizations based on their standpoint on the state building process to explain the gender dynamics within jihadi organizations. By exploring the link between the stand of jihadi organizations and the state building process, and by using the proposed typology, this presentation looks specifically at the reasons and mechanisms by which some jihadi organizations incorporate higher numbers of women with more diverse roles than their other counterparts. This will be followed by a classification of the jobs assigned to women in ISIS as the flagship of state building jihadi organizations.