Description
Women’s involvement in the armed forces is a contested topic within feminist scholarship. Insights on women’s motivations in the so-called “Global South” enrich prevalent Western debates on this issue. This article analyzes why women join the armed forces of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), the Peshmerga, from an intersectional perspective. Based on interviews with female Peshmerga of two distinct generations and ethnographic observation in Erbil, the capital of the KRI, this study concludes that Western gender-stereotypes are not always applicable in the Kurdish context. The paper argues that personal and ideological motivations for joining the Peshmerga are intertwined. Furthermore, it highlights the interconnectedness of family and nationalism in Kurdish society and culture based on past and ongoing insecurity in the region. In the KRI, female Peshmerga not only defy mainstream gender-stereotypes, but also stereotypes of Middle Eastern women’s supposed passivity, highlighting the importance of intersectional approaches. As “double-oppressed” people, as Kurds and as women, the regional focus on Kurdistan highlights the role ethnicity and gender play regarding conflict and (in)security and how we study it. The paper speaks to Feminist literature on agency, gender, and nationalism as well as gender and militarism.
