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

Sep 29, 2025

Gina Vale, a lecturer and interdisciplinary researcher, dives into the lives of local women affected by the Islamic State in her new book. She sheds light on the often-overlooked experiences of Iraqi, Syrian, and Kurdish women under IS governance, discussing the group's gendered expectations and the stark contrast between written policies and real-life enforcement. Vale reveals how local women's stories illuminate the intra-gender dynamics within IS, highlighting issues of public services, education, and morality policing that shaped their daily lives.

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INSIGHT

Local Women's Voices Were Overlooked

Gina Vale found local women's voices on IS governance were largely missing and crucial for understanding impacts.
She used chain referrals and trusted local women's organisations to gather testimonies from displaced women.

INSIGHT

Gendered, Layered Governance

Islamic State built a gender-binarized governance that enforced male dominance and female domestication.
Women's treatment varied by age, ethno-religious identity, place, and timeline within IS control.

ANECDOTE

Paper Rules Versus Militant Practice

On paper IS banned trading pregnant sabaya to control lineage and religion of offspring.
In practice militants ignored the ban and continued to buy and sell pregnant Yazidi women.

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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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