This chapter reviews the literature on the links between religiosity, support for warfare, and gender, and explores the specific aspects of religiosity that might drive women's support for intergroup warfare. The salience of religious issues in modern conflict and wars is not a mere product of mediatic framing or sensationalism. The finding that women are, on average, more religious than men is among the best attested in the field of religious studies. While women's higher sense of nurturing and care for others might be pushing them away from supporting warfare and its harmful consequences, other characteristics that are also stronger among women can be manipulated to make them embrace wars. Women's higher levels of obedience to god might make them more devoted and more willing to accept what comes from a divine authority – including when these commandments can harm others.

In The Credibility Challenge: How Democracy Aid Influences Election Violence, von Borzyskowski develops and persuasively lays out her Credible Election Theory (CET), which posits that (1) elections...

Given the evidence pointing to religiosity and gender as strong predictors of risk aversion, the recruitment of women into extremist organizations seems contradictory. This article is intended to help solve the puzzle of female behavior in terrorist groups by adding some nuance to the discussion: it is not religiosity itself that influences people’s willingness to take risks, but their perception of god’s expectations about them. This is illustrated here with an analysis of ISIS’s magazine Dar al-Islam and the evolution of their messages, from portraying a god that wants submission to a god that needs women’s active participation in battle.