Parish Conkling
Professor
Houston Community College
The Case of the Missing Women: Addressing the Lack of Female Testimony in Accounts of Political Violence
This project seeks to address the question of why women’s active participation in political violence remains overlooked. Despite a growing body of literature in diverse fields such as International Relations, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Sociology and Philosophy, that shows that women can, do, and historically have, chosen to engage in violent acts, this literature is frequently relegated to the fringes of their respective disciplines and regarded as “feminist accounts". I argue that what is needed is an epistemic re-framing of political violence that moves away from gendered descriptions and works to create a more inclusive understanding that looks at the motivations of individuals living in a gendered world.