Motivations, Enlist and Women´s Participation Experiences in ETA

Abstract

This article explores how women who have participated in armed groups experience obstacles, contradictions and pleasures. This participation is crossed by variables which influence and even further polarize gender relationships (illegality, clandestine situation, violence). For that purpose, this research use as methodology twenty five women and six men life stories, who have participated in ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna). Through their testimonies, this article focus on why these women are motivated to join ETA and what factors help or hinder that involvement. On the other hand, it deals with how these women combatants experience pleasures, risks and contradictions when they are part of ETA´s structure. Regarding the main conclusions we see that during the process of integration there are preclusive factors, as familiar and territorial neutralization but also enabling ones, as advantage and tacit position of their genre. Moreover, they develop strategies in order to neutralize the difficulties, such as territorial movements, bridging contacts. Once inside, they have to face obstacles that are the result, among others, of the rules of clandestine life and the sexual division of work. That is how the exile and the militancy abroad become at the same time the source of risks and pleasures.