By: Khushbu Ahlawat, Consulting Editor, GSDN
Introduction
Armed conflicts and separatist movements have historically been narrated through masculinized frameworks of power, strategy, and territorial control. Yet, as Cynthia Enloe reminds us, “the personal is international,” underscoring how global political processes are deeply embedded in gendered hierarchies. Women in conflict zones are not merely collateral victims of war; they are simultaneously targets, survivors, combatants, and peacebuilders within structures shaped predominantly by male political decision-making. Contemporary conflicts—from the ongoing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza to protracted ethnic tensions in South Asia—demonstrate that war is experienced in profoundly gendered ways. According to recent UN assessments (2024–2025), women and children constitute a significant majority of displaced populations globally, with acute shortages of reproductive healthcare, menstrual hygiene products, and livelihood access intensifying their vulnerability. These realities compel a rethinking of separatism and armed resistance not as gender-neutral phenomena, but as deeply gendered political processes that reshape women’s identities, agency, and political consciousness.
This article interrogates how separatist conflicts both constrain and catalyze women’s political roles, asking whether spaces within ethno-nationalist movements inadvertently create conditions for feminist assertion or merely reproduce patriarchal control under militant structures. It comparatively examines three contexts: the plight of Palestinian women in Gaza amid protracted occupation and renewed cycles of violence; the Sri Lankan separatist movement, particularly the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), where women were mobilized as fighters within a rigid ideological framework; and the Meitei–Kuki conflict in Manipur, where women have emerged as protest leaders, community defenders, and, at times, symbols of ethnic nationalism. While these cases differ in geography and political trajectory, they converge in revealing how women navigate the dual burden of communal allegiance and gender subordination. As bell hooks argued, “Feminism is a struggle to end sexist oppression,” yet in conflict zones this struggle is often subsumed within larger nationalist imperatives. By analyzing women as victims, perpetrators, negotiators, and agents of resistance, this article situates gender not at the margins but at the core of separatist politics, highlighting how war simultaneously entrenches patriarchy and opens contested spaces for feminist rearticulation in fragile societies.
Fighting, Femininity, and the Frontlines: Rethinking Resistance Through a Gendered Lens
Conflict and resistance are rarely gender-neutral phenomena; rather, they are embedded within deeply entrenched social hierarchies that define who is expected to fight, who is expected to suffer, and whose violence is considered legitimate. Before engaging specific case studies, it is essential to interrogate why a gender-sensitive lens is indispensable in analyzing conflict. This inquiry must move beyond empathy or romanticized portrayals of women as symbolic victims and instead critically examine the structural conditions that shape their participation, marginalization, and representation. As Cynthia Enloe asserts in Bananas, Beaches and Bases, understanding militarism requires asking where women are—economically, socially, and politically—and how their labor and bodies sustain systems of conflict. Her call to adopt a holistic lens challenges the persistent assumption that war is primarily a masculine enterprise, relegating women to passive or secondary roles.
Contemporary conflicts reinforce the urgency of this analytical shift. In Gaza (2024–2025), women not only bear the brunt of displacement and humanitarian collapse but also emerge as journalists, medics, and grassroots organizers documenting and resisting violence. In Ukraine, women constitute a significant and growing segment of the armed forces, reshaping traditional perceptions of combat roles. Similarly, in Sudan’s ongoing civil war, women’s groups have mobilized peace campaigns despite being disproportionately targeted by gender-based violence. These examples demonstrate that women’s participation in war cannot be reduced to narratives of victimhood or emotional reaction.
Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry, in Mothers, Monsters, Whores, critique how female combatants are framed through narrow archetypes—either as grieving mothers seeking revenge, irrational “monsters,” or hypersexualized deviants. Such representations deny women political agency and obscure their ideological commitments. Violence, strategy, and militaristic decision-making are conventionally coded as masculine traits, reinforcing patriarchal assumptions about bravery, rationality, and leadership. Consequently, when women take up arms or assert authority within resistance movements, their actions are often stigmatized rather than analyzed as expressions of political consciousness.
These gendered constructions influence not only societal perceptions but also operational realities in “fight or flight” scenarios. The expectation that men fight and women endure perpetuates unequal burdens and obscures the complex motivations driving women’s engagement in conflict—whether as combatants, supporters, negotiators, or dissenters. By deconstructing these assumptions, a gendered analysis does not merely add women into existing frameworks; it challenges the foundational premises of how resistance, legitimacy, and power are defined in conflict zones worldwide.
Gaza and the Gendered Burden of War: Survival, Agency, and Silenced Voices
The ongoing war in Gaza since October 7, 2023, offers a stark illustration of how conflict is profoundly gendered in both its violence and its expectations. Women are symbolically framed as those to be “protected”—a trope embedded in the chivalric logic of “women and children first”—yet in practice they constitute a disproportionate share of casualties and displaced populations. UN Women and humanitarian agencies have repeatedly warned that thousands of women have been killed, injured, or rendered homeless, while millions face acute food insecurity and collapsing healthcare systems. As one humanitarian worker observed in 2024, “There is no safe place for women in Gaza.” The contradiction between symbolic protection and lived vulnerability exposes the fragility of patriarchal narratives in wartime.
Beyond victimhood, Palestinian women occupy multiple, often invisible roles: frontline medics, journalists, community organizers, and heads of households in the absence of male relatives. Reports from 2024–2025 highlight severe shortages of menstrual products, prenatal care, and safe childbirth facilities, with hundreds of women giving birth daily under bombardment and displacement. As a displaced Gazan woman told a relief agency, “Our periods have become a nightmare.” Simultaneously, women’s organizations continue advocacy and documentation efforts, asserting political voice amid devastation. Gaza thus reveals not only the suffering of women in war but also their resilience and contested agency within deeply gendered structures of conflict.
From Victims to Combatants: Women, Militancy, and the Politics of Armed Agency
The question of why women take up arms disrupts the deeply embedded assumption that war is an exclusively masculine enterprise. Feminist scholarship has long argued that women are not merely passive victims of violence but political actors capable of choice, strategy, and ideological commitment. As Cynthia Enloe famously asks, “Where are the women?”—a question that compels analysts to look beyond battlefields dominated by male imagery and toward the complex motivations that draw women into armed struggle. Similarly, Laura Sjoberg contends that women’s political violence is often dismissed as emotional deviation rather than recognized as “a conscious engagement with power.” Understanding female militancy, therefore, requires moving beyond sensationalism toward structural analysis.
Contemporary global conflicts reaffirm this urgency. In Ukraine, women now serve in combat and command roles within the armed forces, challenging entrenched gender hierarchies in military institutions. In Kurdish regions of Syria, the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) have become internationally recognized symbols of female armed resistance against ISIS. Meanwhile, in Myanmar’s post-2021 resistance movement, women constitute a visible segment of People’s Defence Forces, often citing state repression and lack of alternatives as catalysts for participation. These examples echo Jennifer Eggert’s framework, which highlights three critical factors influencing women’s militarization: the intensity of military pressure, shortages of male manpower, and the absence of effective external mediation.
The Sri Lankan civil war offers a striking historical case. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) institutionalized female combat units, at times comprising nearly half of its cadre. While propaganda framed participation as emancipation—promising escape from domestic confinement and the creation of a gender-equal Tamil Eelam—numerous testimonies reveal patterns of forced recruitment, especially of adolescent girls. Memoirs and human rights reports document abductions, coercion, and the irreversible nature of enlistment. One former recruit recalled that joining felt like “a one-way door—entry but not exit,” capturing the tension between agency and compulsion.
The romanticization of female fighters—portrayed as heroic, disciplined, and ideologically pure—often obscured the brutality of war and the manipulation embedded within militant structures. As global conflicts continue to evolve, the phenomenon of women taking up arms must be examined not as anomaly or spectacle, but as a politically conditioned outcome of militarization, survival, and contested promises of liberation.
Torchbearers in Turmoil: Gendered Violence and Women’s Resistance in Manipur
The ethnic violence that engulfed Manipur in May 2023 exposed not only deep-rooted communal fractures between the Meitei and Kuki communities but also the profoundly gendered nature of conflict. The viral video of two Kuki women being stripped, paraded, and sexually assaulted in Thoubal district shocked the nation, prompting widespread outrage and renewed scrutiny of state accountability. As one survivor recounted in testimony reported by national media, the mob treated them “as if we were not human.” The brutality underscored a recurring truth in conflict zones: women’s bodies become symbolic battlegrounds upon which notions of honor, revenge, and community dominance are violently inscribed.
Yet, the Manipuri context also reveals a complex and layered story of women’s political engagement. Historically, women in Manipur have not remained confined to passive victimhood. The Meira Paibis—literally “women torchbearers”—emerged in the 1980s as a grassroots civil society movement confronting militarization, substance abuse, and human rights violations. Their activism gained global attention in 2004 when elderly Manipuri women staged a nude protest against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), declaring, “Indian Army, rape us too,” in a searing indictment of custodial violence. In the current crisis (2023–2025), Meira Paibis have resumed night patrols, organized relief for displaced families, and pressured authorities for justice, even as the conflict remains unresolved and sporadic violence continues.
Recent reports indicate ongoing displacement, internet shutdowns, and fragmented peace initiatives, reflecting the fragile security situation in 2025. Within this volatile landscape, women occupy contradictory roles—simultaneously survivors of targeted sexual violence and agents of community mobilization. The Manipuri case therefore challenges simplistic binaries of victim and protector, revealing how gendered violence can provoke both trauma and organized resistance. In the shadow of state inertia and communal polarization, Manipuri women continue to negotiate survival, dignity, and political voice in a deeply fractured society.
From Armed Virgins to Silenced Survivors: Femininity, Militancy, and Aftermath in Sri Lanka
The transformation of Tamil women within the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) raises a critical question: where does femininity go in times of war? Traditionally, femininity in Sri Lankan Tamil society was associated with modesty, restraint, domesticity, and social conformity. Women were respected yet confined—expected to embody silence and poise within patriarchal structures. However, the militarization of women during the Sri Lankan civil war fundamentally disrupted these gendered expectations. As Erin Alexander notes in Women of War, the LTTE’s inclusion of women redefined the Tamil woman from a “nurturing wife” to what was termed the “Armed Virgin”—a disciplined, androgynous, weapon-bearing nationalist figure.
The symbolic cutting of long hair upon recruitment was not merely aesthetic; it marked ideological rebirth and the blurring of gender lines. As Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity suggests, gender is not innate but enacted through repeated practices. The female LTTE cadre, clad in camouflage and carrying AK-47s, performed a new gendered identity that challenged the binary of passive femininity versus aggressive masculinity. One former cadre, Tamilini, reflected that women’s participation in war transformed perceptions of shyness and dependence, replacing them with confidence and authority. Yet, as feminist scholars caution, participation in militarism does not automatically dismantle patriarchy; it often reconfigures it.
Globally, similar patterns persist. In post-ISIS Iraq and Syria, former female fighters struggle with reintegration and stigma. In Colombia, ex-FARC women have reported marginalization despite peace accords promising gender inclusion. Sri Lanka mirrors this trajectory. Today, more than a decade after the war ended in 2009, reports from human rights groups in 2024–2025 indicate that former female LTTE cadres continue to face surveillance, economic precarity, and social ostracization. Many conceal their pasts to avoid discrimination. A former fighter told The Washington Post, “I feel I could have been a leader, but now I must ask for money to leave the house,” capturing the painful regression from militant agency to enforced dependency.
Thus, the promise of emancipation through armed struggle proved paradoxical. The women who once embodied revolutionary heroism now navigate PTSD, unemployment, and patriarchal reintegration. Their journey underscores a sobering reality: while war can temporarily unsettle gender hierarchies, post-conflict societies often restore traditional norms, leaving female combatants suspended between empowerment and exclusion.
This paradox is not confined to Sri Lanka but resonates across contemporary post-conflict societies, where the demobilization of women often coincides with their political marginalization. In Afghanistan following the Taliban’s return to power, women who once served in security forces or civil administration were systematically erased from public life, forced into invisibility despite years of institutional participation. In Ethiopia’s Tigray region, women who engaged in community defense and resistance during the civil war now confront trauma, displacement, and limited reintegration support amid fragile peace negotiations. Similarly, in Colombia—despite the gender-sensitive provisions of the 2016 peace accord—female ex-combatants of the FARC continue to report economic insecurity and stigmatization, with many excluded from meaningful political participation. Even in Ukraine, where women’s combat roles have expanded since 2022, analysts warn that post-war reconstruction may reassert traditional gender norms unless institutional safeguards are embedded early. These global patterns reinforce a central argument of this study: separatist and insurgent movements may temporarily destabilize patriarchal hierarchies by enabling women’s militarized visibility, but without sustained structural transformation, post-conflict societies frequently re-domesticate women into conventional roles. The trajectory from fighter to marginalized civilian thus exposes the unfinished and deeply contested project of gender justice within nationalist and separatist struggles worldwide.
Conclusion: Women and the Architecture of Sustainable Peace
Post-conflict reconstruction, viewed through a feminist theoretical lens, is not merely a technical process of rebuilding institutions and infrastructure; it is a transformative political project that determines whose voices shape the future of a society. Women in post-conflict settings occupy a paradoxical position—simultaneously bearing the disproportionate burdens of war and emerging as indispensable agents of recovery, reconciliation, and reform. Their experiences of trauma, displacement, economic dispossession, and gender-based violence are not isolated hardships but structural consequences of militarized and patriarchal systems. Addressing these layered vulnerabilities is therefore central to preventing conflict relapse and ensuring durable peace.
Meaningful reconstruction requires more than symbolic inclusion. It demands psychosocial support, access to education and healthcare, economic opportunities, land and property rights, and genuine political participation. Women’s leadership in peacebuilding processes enhances social trust, strengthens community cohesion, and integrates gender-responsive priorities into governance frameworks. International mandates such as UN Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820 have institutionalized the recognition that gender equality is inseparable from international peace and security, reinforcing the obligation of states and non-state actors to combat conflict-related sexual violence and expand women’s decision-making roles.
Ultimately, sustainable peace is contingent upon inclusive governance and gender-just reconstruction. Empowering women through economic agency, legal reform, and institutional representation transforms post-conflict societies from fragile ceasefires into resilient political communities. Recognizing women not only as survivors but as architects of peace is essential for achieving equitable development, restorative justice, and long-term stability.
