How Women Impact War

Gender, Conflict, and Peace in Kashmir by Seema Shekhawat offers rich insights into a hitherto unaddressed dimension of the Kashmir conflict—namely, the role played by Kashmiri women in promoting and sustaining the violent separatist movement in the Valley in the 1980s and 1990s and how their participation influenced the trajectory of the militancy in Kashmir. The book is a valuable addition to the literature on women, violence, and peace in South Asia, and the author must be commended for the skill and sensitivity with which she has collected rich first-person narratives of women at the frontlines of political violence.