Not a day goes by when we don't read or hear about women fighting war; U.S. marines in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Peshmerga in Iraq, the YPG in Syria, ISIS' women's brigade, the UAE's first female fighter pilot ... women, it seems, are taking up arms everywhere. And - the media seems to have a hard time discussing women in war without lapsing into sexist and/or orientalist stereotyping - even though the participation of women in war, and in combat, particularly as part of irregular armed forces has been well-documented across the world.
Meanwhile feminists, while being part of the effort of documenting the participation of women in war (also, but not only in combat), have often been ambivalent about women's participation in combat. This paper, drawing on work that considers the importance of narrative frames (Wibben, 2011), aims to tease out the different feminist positions on women and/ in combat and their effects in an effort to take stock of current debates and propose possible ways forward.
