Battling to battle

Female Peshmerga troops in Kurdistan fight their way to the front to face the enemy. The Peshmerga – literally “those who face death” – Iraqi Kurdistan’s army and the main force battling Islamic State militants in northern Iraq, include female recruits. They’re media darlings – and a welcome contrast to Islamic State’s rigid and often brutal subjugation of women.

The narrative of women soldiers fighting against violently misogynistic religious extremists is an appealing one. Certainly, foreign reporters have fallen madly in love with these Pesh women.

But this celebration of the liberated Kurdish female warrior is overblown. Kurdish society is still deeply conservative by Western standards. Almost none of these women have done any actual fighting.

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