War no longer remains the exclusive preserve of men. The rising number of women combatants in recent civil wars and insurgencies goes against prevalent gendered tropes of women as victims of war and men as perpetrators, rendering this phenomenon a subject of fascination for feminist scholars. Several volumes have, therefore, emerged in recent decades seeking to document the specific experiences of women combatants and ex-combatants during and after armed conflict. Alison’s Women and political violence: Female combatants in ethno-national conflict (2009) compares the experience of enlisted women combatants among the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka and the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, while Shekhawat’s (2015) edited volume Female combatants in conflict and peace explores the circumstances of women combatants in multiple contexts. Darden, Henshaw, and Szekely’s Insurgent Women (2019) examines women fighters in Ukraine, Colombia, and the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and Wood’s Female fighters: Why rebel groups recruit women for war (2019) delves into the systematic practices by which insurgent groups may mobilize and recruit women.

Keshab Giri’s book is situated within this landscape and undertakes an exploration of the experiences of women ex-combatants in the transitional period after Nepal’s decade-long (1996–2006) Maoist civil conflict. The book makes two central contributions across six chapters. First, it unpacks simplistic narratives about women’s empowerment through their participation as active combatants in the Maoist insurgency. While women are generally doomed to be victims of conflict, women combatants tend to be slotted into the other extreme position of agents, their presence frequently proxying for social and gender-role transformation. Giri, however, applies an intersectional lens, taking into account caste, class, and ethnicity—that is, the “heterogeneity of backgrounds, social locations, and axes of power and identities” (p. 4)—that influences women combatants’ experiences of war and “postwar” transition, interrogating the putative transformational impacts of the insurgency. Second, the book examines how the public sphere of participation and the private sphere of intimacy (i.e., love, sex, and marriage) were deeply intertwined for women combatants. Indeed, Giri shows that the Maoists’ rules regulating the sphere of intimacy, although seemingly liberal, had gendered impacts for women combatants during and after the conflict.

The first three chapters of the book lay the groundwork. Chapter 1, the introduction, lists the theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions the book seeks to make. Chapter 2 delves into the extant literature on women combatants, their binary characterizations—as either victims or as perpetrators—in this literature, and makes the case for intersectionality as a framework that allows for greater nuance. Chapter 3 considers the question of positionality in field research, namely the issue of a male researcher carrying out feminist research with women respondents in the Global South.

The core arguments of the book are placed in the remaining three chapters. Chapter 4 details the complex motivations of women joining the Maoist conflict, rather than simply accepting the mainstream narrative that the Maoists provided succor for a homogenous group of universally oppressed Nepali women against entrenched patriarchal norms. Rather, Giri argues, Maoist policies used upper-caste Hindu women as the default template for characterizing both oppression and emancipation, eliding the history and specific needs of women from other ethnic groups. Chapter 5 uses the experiences of five women ex-combatants to depict how the interactions of caste, class, marital status, education, and location produced distinct outcomes for these women in the “post-conflict” period in terms of their agency and empowerment. Since the management of fighting cadre is a central aspect of rebellion, Chapter 6—arguably the richest contribution—recounts how the Maoists enacted forms of control over the private sphere which, although noncoercive, nevertheless served to consolidate their political agenda. Giri demonstrates through various examples that despite appearing progressive, “patriarchal ideas of purity and honor” and “traditional heteronormative values” (p. 109) still guided the Maoist approach to marriage or sexuality. For instance, while cross-caste and cross-class marriages were fully permissible within Maoist ranks, these were ultimately means by which the Maoists exercised “emotional and psychological control” (p. 106) over combatants. Further, when these marriages broke down in the “post-conflict” period, women from the so-called lower castes or lower classes bore the brunt of stigma and marginalization in their communities. Finally, the inequitable sharing of care responsibilities often imposed disproportionate costs on Maoist women combatants, illustrating the motherhood penalty even in rebellion.

The book is a comprehensively written and illuminating account of women’s ex-combatants’ experiences during and after Nepal’s Maoist conflict. It is likely to be very useful for scholars and practitioners in international relations, gender studies, and development studies. Intersectionality as the central theoretical framework helps to move away from essentialist conceptualizations of women combatants and Giri does a good job of deconstructing Nepal’s peace processes—frequently lauded as exemplary—to examine their omissions and commissions where this group is concerned and the overall neglect of gender issues in peacebuilding and transition.

Notwithstanding the compelling arguments of the book, minor caveats emerge. The book is the product of a doctoral dissertation. Its depth and thoroughness reflect this origin, but its structure at times distractingly retains the flavor of that enterprise. In many places—most notably Chapter 4—the analysis tends to rely on exposition than on illustration. The summarizing of respondents’ perspectives into broad claims detracts from the immediacy and texture that using their own voices to a greater degree might have provided to the arguments. Chapter 5 was an absorbing read, with Giri noting in the conclusion that the narratives of the five women warn against the “hegemonic construction of female combatants’ experiences …as unequivocally and equally empowered” (p. 94). Although a good takeaway, one common thread between the women ex-combatants whose narratives are spotlighted is their efforts to be active in local politics. In the author’s quest to focus on the elements of the narrative that support his central argument, this aspect of agency —as well as the question of the women’s subjective agency—is downplayed somewhat. Finally, some comparative analysis would have strengthened the book. While Giri rightly critiques the limitations of the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda, he stops short of exploring what a more intersectional WPS approach might entail or whether relevant examples from other contexts could offer useful insights.

Overall, while the book’s contributions vary in depth, it engages thoughtfully with key ongoing discussions in the field and furthers understandings of women ex-combatants’ lives and experiences in transitional contexts, their complex interactions with patriarchal and nationalist structures, and their role in reconciliation and peace-building.