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.

中文翻译：

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披着羊皮的狼：评估性别规范对女性自杀恐怖主义杀伤力的影响

尽管大量研究认为女性为恐怖组织提供了重要的战术利益，但很少有研究得出这一论点的含义或研究女性新兵是否会影响恐怖行动的结果。使用 1985 年至 2015 年个人自杀式袭击的数据，我表明攻击者的性别会影响袭击的致命性。然而，这种影响取决于攻击发生所在州的性别规范。结果表明，只有在女性在公共生活中的作用有限的社会中，女性优势才更为明显；在劳动力、民间社会和抗议组织中女性基本缺席的国家，女性自杀式袭击者的袭击更为致命。我还评估了反恐怖分子是否最终会适应使用女性自杀式恐怖分子。结果表明，女性袭击的杀伤力随着时间的推移而下降，这表明安全部队最终会适应女性参与恐怖主义的行为。这些发现具有重要意义，因为它们突出了持续存在的性别偏见对反恐努力的影响。