Replication Data for: Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Assessing the Effect of Gender Norms on the Lethality of Female Suicide Terrorism

Replication files for: Jakana L. Thomas. "Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: Assessing the Effect of Gender Norms on the Lethality of Female Suicide Terrorism" Although a substantial body of research argues that women provide terrorist organizations with important tactical benefits, few studies draw out the implications of this argument or examine whether female recruits affect the outcomes of terrorist operations. Using data on individual suicide attacks from 1985-2015, I show that an attacker's gender influences the lethality of an attack. This effect is conditional upon the gender norms of the state in which the attack occurs, however. The results demonstrate that a female advantage is only more apparent in societies where a woman's role in public life is limited; attacks by female suicide attackers are more deadly in countries where women are largely absent from the workforce, civil society and protest organizations. This article also assesses whether counterterrorists eventually adapt to the use of female suicide terrorists. The results demonstrate that female attack lethality is declining with time, suggesting that security forces eventually adapt to women's participation in terrorism. These findings are consequential because they highlight the effect of persistent gender biases on counterterrorism efforts.