Women joining ISIS: 4 things to know about recruitment and life on the inside

A woman uses binoculars to watch fighting across the border in Kobani from a hilltop on the outskirts of Suruc, near the Turkey-Syria border, Friday, Oct. 24, 2014. (AP / Vadim Ghirda)

Recruiting women with the promise of violence and subjugation might not be the best public relations strategy, but it seems to be working for ISIS. Over the past week, we've heard tales of women from the U.K., Quebec, and Edmonton leaving their western democracies for a life with the terror organization.

In fact, women are believed to account for about 10 per cent of the 4,000 western recruits who have crossed the Turkish border to join ISIS. That's approximately 550 women, and that number is growing.

So why give up the freedom and opportunities open to them in places like Canada, and the United States, to serve a group known for its abuse of women?

1. Shared community

Few prospects and limited opportunity is a common theme shared by these women.

"They are disconnected from their current environment", Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer specializing in radicalization of youth, told CTV News Channel Thursday. "They have decided this is how they will bring meaning to their lives." This feeling, coupled with a religious fervour, leads to dangerous results.

Hamdani says that many of these young people believe they are part of something bigger, and that joining a new, emerging state gives them meaning.

Erin Saltman, senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue agrees. She says these women see themselves living in a complicated political world, and the caliphate under ISIS as a more pure, simplified existence, where everything can be sorted into good and evil, black and white.

For these women, ISIS provides them with a chance to be their "purest form, not sexualized like they are in the West." ISIS gives them a social circle and more defined role, something of importance for those trying to carve out a place for themselves in the greater society.

2. Chance for romance

In building a 'utopian' society, there is an added element of romanticization in joining ISIS, says Saltman. They are meeting their husbands, and embarking on an adventure.

Of course, the reality when they arrive is quite different. "They are confined to the home, limited to their role as a wife and mother, to procreate and create the next generation of jihadists." They cannot vote, and have no say in how life is dictated to them.

3. Propaganda targets

According to Saltman, ISIS is successful in targeting women because it has allowed for the decentralization of propaganda, so that anyone within the group can communicate with the outside world. This promotes correspondence with friends at home, to encourage them to follow the path to Syria.

ISIS is also successful in tailoring its propaganda to nationalities, so they can target different cultures and genders with more precision, and speak directly to the unique experience of a hockey player in Montreal, or a University student in Leeds.

4. Life Under ISIS

While women might be drawn to ISIS's militant nature, they do not take up violent roles in the group. "Sharia law dictates women are most valued as wives and mothers", Saltman says. And while they might receive some training, they only take up arms when the male forces are depleted and they are needed. They are not terrorists or foreign fighters, but rather are referred to, according to Saltman, as “female migrants.” Their place is in the home, supporting their men on the front lines, who are targeting the very countries these migrants left behind.