Women leaders in the Rwandan Genocide: When women choose to kill

Low-level violence and looting by women against one’s neighbors is perhaps, sadly, unsurprising but the involvement of female leaders in the genocide against the Tutsi (cabinet officials, nuns, journalists, nurses, and teachers) is striking and factually well-established. Were women more likely to be perpetrators of genocide violence in Rwanda than in other cases of mass violence or does it appear this way only because we have more evidence? Regardless of the answer, this essay seeks to explore the evidence we do have of leading female perpetrators and their motivation.