Women have played an important role in the terrorist activity of some of the prominent groups that use suicide terrorism. In general this prominence is limited to the organizations with a nationalist orientation. The fundamentalist Islamic terror groups have never let women to take part in their terrorist activities, let alone in suicide terrorism.

The nationalist groups ... enable women to participate in their most extreme attacks. The leaders of these groups often exploit female members' profound desire to prove equality with their male peers and encourage--sometimes even manipulate them--to "volunteer" for such missions.

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The reasons for using women in particular in this kind of operation evolved from a variety of considerations on the part of the organizations. However, all of these groups deceptively used the innocent appearance of a "pregnant" woman in order to bypass heavy security arrangements while approaching their targets. All of them take advantage of women's desire to prove their abilities and devotion to the organization and to their supreme leader.

Excerpt From Countering Suicide Terrorism

©2001, 2002 The International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya and Anti-Defamation League