Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Gina Vale, "The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Aired: September 29, 2025
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Dr. Gina Vale, Lecturer of Criminology, University of Southampton

Overview

In this episode, Dr. Miranda Melcher interviews Dr. Gina Vale about her powerful and ground-breaking book, The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State. Through extensive fieldwork and sensitive interviews, Dr. Vale unpacks how Islamic State governance operated in Iraq and Syria from the perspectives of women—shedding light on experiences long overlooked in scholarly, policy, and media circles. The conversation explores the gap between IS’s official gendered rhetoric and its practical enforcement, the intersectionality shaping women's lives under IS, and the overlooked forms of both suffering and resistance.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins of the Project and Research Approach

• Research Motivation: Dr. Vale set out to explore the long-term impacts of Islamic State (IS) governance on local women in Iraq and Syria, highlighting the glaring absence of women's voices in prior literature.

  • “Local women’s voices have been very underexplored... I quickly realized that we didn’t know what they went through to start with.” (03:39-04:26, Dr. Gina Vale)

• Methodological Challenges

  • Navigating trauma, politics, and her own “outsider status” as a white Western researcher.
  • Relied on trusted local women’s rights organizations, journalists, and chain referrals to build trust.
  • Fieldwork involved visiting multiple IDP/refugee camps and conducting remote interviews in Syria.
  • Fieldwork coincided with the collapse of IS’s last territorial enclave in Baghouz, making access and timing particularly sensitive (08:09-09:14).

2. IS Gender Governance: Expectation, Stratification, and Identity

• IS’s Gendered Social Order:

  • “Almost like an onion. There were so many layers to it.” (10:33, Dr. Gina Vale)
  • Enforced a strict, binary hierarchy: men as public warriors, women as domesticated and reproductive.
  • “Men were meant to be aggressive and dominant. Women were meant to be subservient, obedient to their husband, obedient to others.” (12:22-12:27)

• Intersectional Stratification:

  • Identity factors—age, marital status, and especially ethno-religious background (e.g., Sunni, Shia, Yazidi, Kurdish)—determined different rules, expectations, and degrees of violence.
  • “Even as a woman, you’re not just a woman under Islamic State. The different intersecting aspects of your identity puts you into different categories... subject to different governance rules and regulations.” (14:46-15:05)

• Geography & Timeline:

  • More intense surveillance/punishment in cities like Mosul and Raqqa than in rural areas.
  • Governance became increasingly harsh from 2012 to 2014-15, then gradually declined from 2016 onward (15:48-16:06).

3. Regulation versus Reality

• Gap Between Policy and Practice:
  • “There are regulations on paper and then there is the reality of the practice...” (16:38)
  • Some ‘red lines’ (like forced marriage for Sunni women) were more strictly enforced than others.
  • Example: Ban on trading pregnant Yazidi slaves was regularly ignored by IS members for personal gain.
  • “They were treated as chattel... You could see the way in which the regulations simply did not apply to them when it was convenient.” (19:08-19:23)

4. Access to Public Spaces and Services

• Movement and Modesty Restrictions:

  • Women’s movement restricted—required male chaperones and full-body coverings, making even shopping or seeing a doctor a struggle.
  • “A lot of the women said they just couldn’t see anything... couldn’t even tell whether the shopkeeper had given them the correct change because they couldn’t see their own hand in front of them.” (22:01-22:14)

• Segregated Services:

  • IS established parallel systems: female-only hospitals, schools, markets, and sometimes even separate sidewalks.
  • Economic stratification: some families couldn’t afford mandated dress, forcing women to depend on neighbors for necessities.
  • “There were really hidden costs and impacts of these regulations that came through in the interviews...” (25:36)

• Healthcare Inequality:

  • Female-only medical staff for civilians; enslaved Yazidi women dependent on their captors to access healthcare, often denied treatment.
  • “Not even a second-class citizen... a third class, or not even a class at all.” (29:07)

5. Enforcement & Punishment

• Women Policing Women:

  • IS created all-female brigades (e.g., Al Khansa Brigade) within the “morality police” to enforce rules on other women—surveilling, whipping, detaining.
  • “There was no protected space other than their own home from which they could shield themselves from Islamic State surveillance.” (36:32-36:38)
  • “It all comes down to this stratification of women and the empowerment of some women to punish other women.” (39:22)

• Spectacular vs. Hidden Punishments:

  • Public punishments: floggings, stonings, especially for “sexual” transgressions like adultery.
  • Hidden tools of repression: Women who resisted IS or assisted the anti-IS coalition were disappeared or executed privately to prevent others from seeing female resistance as possible.
  • “They didn’t want to advertise that women had the capacity of rebelling against the group in that way.” (38:42)

• Personal Trauma and Community Impact:

  • Many women Dr. Vale interviewed were family members of the “disappeared.”
  • “None of this is light-hearted. All of this is horrific... Entire communities are heavily traumatized and affected by what happened.” (44:41-44:52)

6. Education: Propaganda and Reality

• IS Propaganda vs. Real Policies:

  • Publicized images of educated girls in bright abayas contrasted with actual closing of girls’ secondary schools and barely-literate curricula.
  • “There was this almost institutionalized dumbing down of girls despite the fact they had promoted their education.” (52:36)

• Acts of Resistance:

  • Notable protest: 35 women and girls marched in Deir ez-Zor, successfully demanding a girls' school reopen (48:26-49:10).
  • Secret teaching: some educators secretly taught more advanced material, keeping forbidden lessons in hidden notebooks.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Research Motivation:

  • “We didn't know what they went through to start with. So... my own path to doing this book was actually a backtrack and realizing that there was such a gap in knowledge.” (04:23-04:38, Dr. Gina Vale)

• On Methodology:

  • "I am not part of the in-group that I was studying... I was very much aware of my outsider status, but working with women’s rights organizations, human rights organizations... and local journalists... starting from there." (07:05-08:30, Dr. Gina Vale)

• On Identity and Stratification:

  • “Even as a woman, you’re not just a woman under Islamic State. The different intersecting aspects of your identity puts you into different categories.” (14:46-15:05, Dr. Gina Vale)

• Healthcare Disparities:

  • “Not even a second class citizen... a third class, or not even a class at all.” (29:07, Dr. Gina Vale, about Yazidi women in hospitals)

• On Punishment and Surveillance:

  • "There was no protected space other than their own home from which they could shield themselves from Islamic State surveillance." (36:34-36:38, Dr. Gina Vale)

• On Remembering Trauma:

  • “None of this is light-hearted. All of this is horrific... Not only of the individuals that I spoke to, their families, entire communities are heavily traumatized and affected by what happened. And that’s going to take a long time to heal. But it is important to speak about and to learn from what happened.” (44:41-45:03, Dr. Gina Vale)

• Acts of Resistance:

  • “The strength of these women really never ceased to absolutely amaze and inspire me.” (49:48-50:09, Dr. Gina Vale)

Key Timestamps

• [03:07] — Dr. Gina Vale's background and research motivation
• [04:26] — Discovery of the research gap
• [06:46] — Methodological challenges and building trust
• [10:26] – [15:13] — Gender governance, identity stratification, and IS strategies
• [16:38] – [19:23] — Policy vs. practice and enforcement
• [22:01] — Restrictions on women’s movement and clothing
• [25:01] – [29:19] — Segregated public services and healthcare inequalities
• [32:14] – [39:22] — Structure and mechanisms of punishment
• [44:41] – [45:13] — On trauma, purpose of the book
• [46:07] – [53:10] — Education policies and acts of resistance
• [53:31] — Dr. Vale's current and future research

Closing Thoughts

This episode provides a deeply nuanced, empathetic exploration of the complex lives of women under the Islamic State. Dr. Vale’s research dispels reductionist narratives, showing how governance and suffering were shaped by nuanced identity intersections and geographies—and that resistance, both individual and collective, persisted even under the harshest conditions. As Dr. Vale notes, “it is important to speak about and learn from what happened,” lest these women and their experiences remain unforgotten.

For further details, read The Unforgotten Women of the Islamic State (Oxford UP, 2024).