| dc.description.abstract | From sweethearts to sex slaves, nurturing mothers to brutish police officers, roles for women in the so-called Islamic State are as diverse as their origins. Female functions within the organization vary, depending on one’s religion, ideology, age, and nationality. While Daesh’s exhaustive propaganda machine legitimizes the assignment of women’s roles through historic and religious justifications, they also remain consistent with exaggerated gender roles in warfare, recurrent in human history across time and space. This analysis strives to better understand the organization’s utilization of arguably their most powerful weapon. By analyzing Daesh propaganda through an intersection of qualitative content analysis overlaid with gender-war theory, this thesis explores the roles for women in Daesh, the historic and religious justifications underlying these roles, and tests whether female functions in Daesh fit the recurring gender roles posited by gender-war theorists. | eng |