Invisible Pirates: Women and the Gendered Roles of Somali Piracy

• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Author: Brittany Gilmer
• DOI: 10.1177/1557085117741361
• Date: 01 July 2019
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1557085117741361

Feminist Criminology

2019, Vol. 14(3) 371 –388

© The Author(s) 2017

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/1557085117741361

journals.sagepub.com/home/fcx

Article

Invisible Pirates: Women

and the Gendered Roles of

Somali Piracy

Brittany Gilmer1

Abstract

Women’s participation in maritime piracy activities has spanned throughout the

centuries and across the globe. However, women as perpetrators of contemporary

maritime piracy have yet to receive academic attention. Based on ethnographic

research conducted in Somalia, this exploratory study expands upon current

understandings of Somali piracy by examining four roles women fulfill in the onshore

infrastructure: relationship facilitators, resource dealers, care workers, and financial

investors. It draws from piracy studies and utilizes a feminist countertopographies

approach to analyze how these roles can aid in (re)conceptualizing Somali piracy as a

gendered activity that enables the active participation of women.

Keywords

maritime piracy, international issues, female criminality, Somalia, ethnographic

research

Introduction

As Belknap (2014) argues in her seminal text, The Invisible Woman, breaking the law

is gendered. Despite the well-documented gendered-aspect of crime, women and girls

continue to be absent in the study of crime due to broader resistance in academia.

Since the 1970s, feminist criminology scholars have made notable strides toward dis-

rupting the gendered biases in criminal justice research and making women offenders

more visible. However, research on women offenders remains marginal and male-

centered research remains the default. This gender-bias is particularly salient among

cross-cultural and international research on crime (Kim & Merlo, 2014). Although an

1Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Brittany Gilmer, Florida International University, 11200 S.W. 8th St., PCA-369, Miami, FL 33199, USA.

Email: bgilmer@fiu.edu

741361FCXXXX10.1177/1557085117741361Feminist CriminologyGilmer

research-article2017

372 Feminist Criminology 14(3)

increasing number of studies analyze the role of women in transnational organized

crimes, such as human smuggling and drug smuggling (Campbell, 2008; Soudijn &

Kleemans, 2009; Zhang, Chin, & Miller, 2007; Arsovska & Allum, 2014), women as

perpetrators of contemporary maritime piracy remains a neglected area of study.

Historical studies demonstrate that women’s participation in maritime piracy activ-

ities has spanned throughout the centuries and across the globe (see Defoe, 1724/1999;

Murray, 1981, 1987; Klausmann, Meinzerin, & Kuhn, 1997; Rediker, 1993; Stanley,

Chambers, Murray, & Wheelwright, 1995). Appleby (2013) suggests that during the

golden age of piracy, “despite its essentially masculine character, the male-domi-

nated world of the pirate was strongly supported by women’s agency” (pp. 51-52).

He emphasizes that even though women did not participate much in robbery at sea,

they played diverse roles onshore such as receivers of stolen goods, aiders, abettors

and accessories, and wives and partners. The absence of women from contemporary

maritime piracy studies not only reveals a gap in the literature but it also risks perpetu-

ating the assumption that women are rarely perpetrators of and only play marginal

roles in transnational organized crime.

This is an exploratory study that seeks to fill this existing gap by taking initial steps

to identify the roles of women in Somali piracy. Drawing from piracy studies and

using a feminist countertopographies approach, it (re)conceptualizes Somali piracy as

a gendered activity. A feminist countertopographies approach is one that examines the

multiscalar links of a locality or region to understand its salient features and broader

mutual relationships. As such, this study uses gendered bodies as the scale of analysis

to examine how male/female relationships and practices determine how and where

women participate in Somali piracy activities. In doing so, it attempts to disrupt the

male-biased understanding of Somali piracy in three ways. First, it highlights the gen-

eral masculinization of the practices and spaces of Somali piracy most often repre-

sented in text and visual imagery. Second, it describes how Somali women are currently

framed as victims of piracy. Third, and the focus of the study, it introduces testimonials

from ethnographic research conducted in Somalia to expand upon and push current

understandings of what role women play (and may potentially play) within the crime

category of maritime piracy.

A Man’s Crime on a Man’s Sea? The Masculinization of

Somali Piracy

Contemporary piracy studies have produced an extensive body of literature that takes

a multidisciplinary approach to critically analyzing the issue of maritime piracy as it

occurs across various geographical regions. This body of literature resonates with aca-

demics, practitioners, and policymakers, and can be divided into three main pillars: (a)

causes, organizational structures, and practices of piracy; (b) institutional responses to

piracy; (c) attempts to historicize and deconstruct the wider politics of piracy (Bueger,

2014). Despite the breadth, depth, and diversity of these studies, until recently, very

few studies have considered gender as a central component of analysis (Gilmer, 2017).

Rather, a review of the titles from piracy studies bibliography found at Piracy-studies.