Gendering journalistic voices for gendered political violence? Agential representations of Palestinian female suicide bombers in UK broadcast news media

In the late twentieth century, the rise of the female suicide bomber phenomenon was prevalent in Chechnya, Lebanon and Sri Lanka. Arguably, in terms of academic engagement and visibility within the wider public consciousness, the first wave of Palestinian female suicide bombers during the second intifada (2000–05) encapsulates particular notoriety in relation to the perceived deviance of Palestinian female participation in political violence. Key to this construction is the role of news media as an agent of power. This article examines coverage of Palestinian female suicide bombers during the second intifada period within the scarcely examined medium of British terrestrial broadcast news media. This article determines the impact of individual journalists' gender in producing forms of discourse that delegitimize political agency. In particular, it shall establish if female journalistic voices are complicit in communicating intersectional gendered and Orientalist frameworks.

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing: Assessing the Effect of Gender Norms on the Lethality of Female Suicide Terrorism

Although a substantial body of research argues that women provide terrorist organizations with important tactical benefits, few studies draw out the implications of this argument or examine whether female recruits affect the outcomes of terrorist operations. Using data on individual suicide attacks from 1985 to 2015, I show that an attacker's gender influences the lethality of an attack. However, this effect is conditional upon the gender norms of the state in which the attack occurs. The results demonstrate that a female advantage is more apparent only in societies where a woman's role in public life is limited; attacks by female suicide attackers are more deadly in countries where women are largely absent from the workforce, civil society, and protest organizations. I also assess whether counterterrorists eventually adapt to the use of female suicide terrorists. The results demonstrate that female attack lethality is declining with time, suggesting that security forces eventually adapt to women's participation in terrorism. These findings are consequential because they highlight the effect of persistent gender biases on counterterrorism efforts.

The tradeoffs of using female suicide bombers

Why are there so few female suicide bombers despite their tactical effectiveness? To explain the rarity of this phenomenon, I examine the tradeoffs that armed groups face when using female suicide bombers. While rigid gender norms make female bombers more effective because security personnel are less suspicious of them, gender inequality also drives down the demand for female suicide bombers. I posit that the tradeoffs of using female bombers induce a curvilinear relationship between women’s status and the prevalence of female suicide bombers. Specifically, I argue that female bombers will be more common in countries with middling levels of gender equality than in highly equal or unequal societies. Using data on over 5,500 suicide attacks, from 1974 to 2016, I find support for this hypothesis.

Analysing regional unemployment rates, GDP per capita and financial support for regional suicide prevention programme on suicide mortality in Japan using governmental statistical data

ObjectivesTo explore the mechanisms of reduced suicide mortality in Japan, which decreased from 25.7 to 16.5 per 100 000 people following the comprehensive suicide prevention programme from 2009 to 2018, the present study determined the relationship between regional suicide mortality, socioeconomic data (GDP per capita, unemployment rates) and financial support for regional suicide prevention programmes.Design and settingStepwise multiple regression analysis was used to determine the effects of regional GDP per capita, unemployment rates and implementation amount of financial support for regional suicide prevention programmes (Emergency Fund to Enhance Community-Based Suicide Countermeasures—EFECBSC) on age and gender disaggregated suicide mortalities in Japan between 2009 and 2018. Data on each prefecture’s complete unemployment rates, GDP per capita and implementation amount of EFECBSC sub-divisions were derived from an official Japanese governmental database.ResultsBoth prefectural enlightenment and intervention model programmes were found to lead to a decrease in male suicide mortality, but were less effective in reducing female suicide mortality. Municipal enlightenment and intervention model programmes were also less effective in reducing suicide mortality. Municipal development programmes for listener and leader led to a greater decrease in suicide mortality for both men and women compared with such programmes at the prefectural level. Contrary to our expectations, reduced complete unemployment rate only reduced suicide mortality in the older male population without affecting female suicide mortality.ConclusionThe study findings suggest an inverse relationship between financial support and suicide mortality in Japan. Furthermore, independent factors in the reduction of suicide mortality rates provide important information for planning evidence-based and cost-effective regional suicide prevention programmes.