Cohen, Dara Kay. "Female Combatants and the Perpetration of Violence: Wartime Rape in the Sierra Leone Civil War". World Politics, Vol.65, No.3 (2013): 383-415.

Cohen, Dara Kay. "Female Combatants and the Perpetration of Violence: Wartime Rape in the Sierra Leone Civil War". World Politics, Vol.65, No.3 (2013): 383-415.

• Most contemporary scholarship on the role of women in warfare assumes that they are either noncombatants or victims of war, even when they are members of an armed force, it is assumed that they play dependent roles as camp followers or only participate in violence when forced by men (383).
• The author not only joins other scholars who challenge this dichotomy by showing women's role as independent perpetrators of violence, but shows that women in combat play an aggressive role in the rape of women, and sometimes men, during wartime (384, 386).
• "That women perpetrate wartime atrocities is surprising only because of the gendered assumptions that scholars and policymakers often make about women’s capacity to commit violence" (386).
• Studies from a number of African conflicts show that women frequently engage in wartime violence, including sexual violence. A source mine of recent cases from Sudan, Sierra Leone, Haiti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Iraq, and Liberia is available on pages 384 and 385.
• Sources for information about wartime sexual violence perpetrated by women is limited largely because existing surveys do not ask about the sex of perpetrators; they are assumed to be men. The sole exception was a 2010 survey in the DRC, which revealed surprising rates of female participation in sexual violence (386).
• The assumption that women are not 'real combatants' in warfare has real policy consequences for both combatants and victims of female-led violence. In Bosnia, female war criminals are not being tried based on assumptions that women are inherently non-violent. In Sierra Leone and elsewhere, women are excluded from demobilization campaigns, leaving them without the social services available to other former fighters (410).
• The author uses a broad definition of 'perpetrator.' While some women committed the actual rape of victims by inserting objects into victims’ bodies, other women were involved in gang rape by holding down the victim or by committing other violent acts with a sexual component (384).
• Female participation in wartime sexual violence is driven by many of the same factors as drive male sexual violence, namely in that both men and women in armed groups are exposed to group pressures to commit certain forms of violence. In armed groups with low social cohesion, participating in gang rape or other violent acts can cement a group bond, driving men and women to engage in this behavior under social pressure from a violent leadership (386-387, 410).
• It is commonly thought that the presence of women in armed groups decreases the likelihood of sexual violence being perpetrated by that group, largely drawing on the high rates of female participation and low rates of sexual violence during the insurgencies in Sri Lanka and El Salvador (388).
• The traditional perspective on female violence is that, whether by nature or nurture, women are less violent than men and therefore cannot really be considered combatants. This theory says that women are less violent and that their inclusion in an armed group will decrease all forms of violence by shaming men into proper behavior (389).
• For this tradition hypothesis to be true, it would be expected that men are the sole perpetrators of sexual violence and that male combatants feel shameful committing rape in front of their female counterparts (389-390).
• The substitution argument claims that sexual violence is mainly driven by lack of access to consensual sex, meaning that the integration of women into armed groups means that less sexual violence is directed towards noncombatants because male and female soldiers fuck each other instead, sometimes non-consensually (390).
• This theory suggests that sexual violence should still be committed exclusively by men, but that the rate of sexual violence should decrease when more women are included in the group. These cases would also include reports of sex, consensual or otherwise, between combatants (390).
• The selection argument contends that the people who choose to join armed groups are more violence and sadistic than the general population, especially if they need lots of people or lack a clear ideology. This would imply that men and women in armed groups commit sexual violence because they are inherently violent (391).
• This theory would imply that male and female volunteers for armed groups are more violent than those recruited forcibly into the group, and that both men and women commit sexual violence (391).
• The combatant socialization argument claims that wartime violence is the result of group dynamics and peer pressure, especially within groups with low social capital, like those formed through abduction or press ganging. Gang rape and other types of group violence can create bonds between these combatants because the intense violence separates participants from their previous lives and because dark secrets bond groups (392-393).
• This theory contends that involuntary fighters would be more likely than voluntary recruits to participate in wartime sexual violence, especially in gang rape. It also predicts that male and female fighters would be equally likely to participate in sexual violence against civilians (393).
• The author based the research around a series of 34 interviews with former fighters, male and female, representing all of the major factions in the Sierra Leonean civil war. Interviewees were former adult fighters or former child soldiers and included both foot soldiers and commanders. The interviews were one-on-one and lasted around two hours (394-395).
• There was significant variation in the number of female combatant present in the ranks of the Revolutionary United Front, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, the Civilian Defense Forces, and the Sierra Leonean Army. Women were massively more common in the ranks of the United Front, making up 24% of all combatants, compared to under 10% in both the Army and the Civilian Defense Forces, and almost nonexistent in Council forces (396).
• Only 5,200 women registered in official disarmament and rehabilitation programs, although the actual number of female combatants is much higher. Their numbers especially increased in the mid to late 1990s as the conflict intensified and armed groups expanded (396).
• Rape was widespread during the Sierra Leone civil war, with gang rape being reported as the most common. Most rape occurred in the late 1990s, during an especially intense period of fighting including the invasion of Freetown. The years 1998 and 1999 account for almost 70% of all reported rapes during the conflict (396).
• The vast majority of rape cases reported were committed by the rebel forces of the Revolutionary United Front, despite making up over a third of combatants. The Front soldiers committed a disproportionate number of rapes (397).
• The traditional perspective that women are nurturing and non-violent cannot be sustained alongside accounts of women as equally brutal combatants as men. Interviews with ex-combatants in Sri Lanka, Northern Ireland, and Sierra Leone confirmed that women were fierce fighters, often tougher or more brutal than men out of a need to assert dominance in a patriarchal setting (397-398).
• Rather than 'shaming' men into appropriate behavior, the gender dynamics of mixed-gender groups encouraged more violence and brutality as women attempted to outdo the men and men attempted to avoid being trumped by women. These groups are often more belligerent, not less (398).
• The hypothesis from the traditional perspective that large numbers of female combatants would limit rape, as well as overall violence, is fundamentally untrue. In fact, armed groups with more women were more, not less, likely to commit wartime sexual violence (399).
• Interviews with fighters indicated that the presence of female combatants did not induce any feelings of shame during gang rapes. Some reported shame around the rape when forced to do so by commanding officers, but they did not report feeling shame for committing rape in front of women (400).
• Although women are rarely in positions of power in the military, those ranking female officers are unlikely to make decisions differently than their male counterparts. Research finds that in the military, like other fields, both men and women will adjust to the institutional climate and internalize those norms (398-399).
• The traditional perspective would led us to believe that women do not participate in wartime sexual violence, however, the data shows that a quarter of all gang rapes committed during the civil war involved female perpetrators. This is largely because the United Front had the most female fighters and committed the most rapes (399-400).
• The substitution theory implies that the presence of female combatants would change sexual dynamics through either widespread sexual abuse of co-belligerents or consensual marriages between combatants. Although uncommon among other groups, rape of female combatants was common in the United Front, especially against new members. The Front also abducted large numbers of civilians into sexual slavery (401).
• The substitution theory already has several theoretical problems, namely it assumes that sexual intercourse rather than masturbation is the main way troops satisfy their needs, and that the primary purpose of rape is sexual gratification. Studies have shown that masturbation is extremely common in armies, and rape motivated by sexual desire would not explain the high prevalence of gang rape or rape with objects in wartime (401).
• Contrary to expectations, and despite high levels of sexual abuse of both captives and female combatants, the United Front did not commit fewer rapes than other groups, but massively more. This disproves the substitution theory in the case of Sierra Leone (401).
• The selection theory would suggest that violence has most common among volunteers, who would make up the most violent members of their communities. The vast majority of Front soldiers, 93% of women and 85% of men, were abducted and pressed into joining the Front, meaning that most rapes were committed by conscripts rather than volunteers. Furthermore, there is no indication from interviews that access to sex was ever a factor for volunteers joining the Front (402).
• The prevalence of female perpetrators of wartime rape in Sierra Leone speaks strong against the selection theory, as almost all rape during peacetime are committed by men, whereas women were heavily involved in wartime sexual violence (402-403).
• The combatant socialization thesis explains the participation of women in wartime sexual violence in Sierra Leone, which has characterized by equal female and male perpetration of sexual violence, the overwhelming prevalence of gang rape, and the restriction of women to crimes of gang rape (403).
• Women would perpetrate and participate in gang rape in a variety of ways. Female combatants located women for other members of the group to rape, and held those women down to be raped. Women also perpetrated rape by inserting their hands, bottles, or sticks into the victim's genitals (403-404).
• The knowledge from these interviews are limited to gang rapes committed by soldiers of the United Front, as stories of women from other factions committing rape could not be located (403).
• There is no evidence that suggests women felt guilty for committing sexual violence against other women nor sympathized with the victim. Interviews revealed the rape was viewed by male and female ex-combatants as a bonding activity and a form of entertainment, usually committed in front of the group and often while under the influence of drugs (404-405).
• Rather than being associated with the disgust or shame displayed towards rape in most peacetime societies, those soldiers who had committed many rapes were admired by their fellow soldiers for being brave and virile. The status conferred by rape created the social conditions to pressure many combatants into the crime (405).
• The success of gang rape as an activity for increasing the social cohesion of an armed unit is demonstrated by the remarkably high rates of continued contact among veterans of the United Front as opposed to other armed groups. The press-ganged Front soldiers were more likely to remain in contact with their units than veterans of the Civilian Defense Force, despite the fact that most Defense Force fighters were neighbors or relatives (405).
• Contrary to many assumptions that women associated with armed groups are camp followers rather than soldiers, reports from Sierra Leone indicate that, although most took on more domestic duties than men, significant numbers of women served primarily as combat soldiers and actively participated in wartime violence (406).
• Some scholars have suggested that soldiers in many conflict may be forced to commit rape by their commanders as a weapon of war. This was not the case in Sierra Leone, where although commanders did condone and order rape, 75% of combatants committed rape without orders to do so (408).
• Women, as well as men, were pressured and cajoled into perpetrating rape. It is extremely unlikely that most of these men or women would have committed rape during peacetime. Women in particular were subject to sexual violence and may have found that the increased social status from participating in gang rape protected them against sexual violence (408).
• "The argument offered here is one plausible explanation for why women perpetrate violence alongside men. Women and men are subjected to similar pressures from within armed groups and, facing similar circumstances, can be expected to commit similar atrocities" (410).