Gina Vale, "The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Sep 29, 2025

Gina Vale, a lecturer and researcher specializing in gender studies and criminology, discusses her book on the overlooked experiences of local women under Islamic State governance. She shares insights from interviews with 63 Iraqi, Syrian, and Kurdish women, highlighting the gendered rules imposed by IS. Vale reveals the harsh realities of mobility restrictions, healthcare access, and morality policing by female enforcers. She also contrasts the propaganda around girls' education with the grim realities faced during the group's rule, shedding light on women's resilience and resistance.

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INSIGHT

Local Women Were Overlooked In Research

Local women's voices from Iraq, Syria and Kurdish areas were largely overlooked in early IS research.
Gina Vale began by filling that gap to understand long-term impacts on these women's lives.

ADVICE

Use Trusted Local Networks

Use trusted local networks, women's groups and journalists when researching sensitive conflict zones.
Build relationships and employ chain referrals to reach participants who will safely share experiences.

INSIGHT

Gender-Binarized Governance

IS governance enforced a gender-binarized system that assigned rigid, complementary roles to men and women.
Women were domesticated and stratified further by age and ethno-religious identity, affecting rights and treatment.

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The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Gina Vale explores the governance of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist organization through the lives and words of local Iraqi, Syrian, and Kurdish women. While the roles and activities of foreign (predominantly Western), pro-IS women have garnered significant attention, the experiences and insights of local civilian populations have been largely overlooked.

Drawing on the testimonies of 63 local Sunni Muslim and Yazidi women, Dr. Vale exposes the group's intra-gender stratified system of governance. Eligibility for the group's protection, security, 'citizenship', and entrance into the (semi-)public sphere were not universal, but required convergence with the gender norms of IS, through permanent erasure or at least temporary disguise of certain markers of difference. In some cases, this was directed by a pre-meditated 'divide and conquer' strategy, while in others, it manifested as unregulated violences at the hands of individual group members, including women.

The structure follows the trajectory of IS's increasing control over its 'citizens' and captive populations: its militarization of society; imposition of law and order; provision of goods and services; and intervention in civilians' private lives. Analysis of diverse first-hand accounts and the group's documentation reveals that the presence, exclusion, and victimization of local civilian women were necessary to the functioning and legitimation of IS's 'caliphate' project, and the supremacy of affiliated men - and women. As a fledgling proto-state, IS needed local Iraqi, Syrian, and Kurdish women. Though far from represented or protected, they were by no means forgotten.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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