This pioneering book examines the experiences of women in war economies, analyzing women’s roles as actors, perpetrators, collaborators and victims of these. In today’s armed conflicts, lines between fighting, crime and pillage merge; with warring parties engaging in large-scale illicit enterprises – both to profit, and to generate funds required to sustain insurgencies. These economies, fed and sustained by conflict, are known as ‘war economies’. Orly Stern rethinks dominant paradigms about war economies using a gendered lens, offering important new perspectives that have the potential to inform future thinking on armed conflict. Chapters provide insights into women’s experiences in criminal activities that are fueled and enabled by armed conflict, including natural resource extraction, human trafficking, smuggling, kidnapping for ransom, and the drug trade. To illustrate the phenomenon discussed, the book explores detailed case studies, such as the activities of the Somali militant
