Hidden violence and silenced voices: Why have lessons about women in counterinsurgency not endured?

This article offers a feminist critique to unearth the forgotten but extensive involvement of women in counterinsurgency campaigns. Using the colonial case-studies of Malaya and Kenya, this article argues that women have been excluded from the histories of these campaigns, and lessons left unlearned, because it has been inconvenient to the British Army and military history scholars to include them. By exploring original archival material from the British Red Cross, Women’s Institute, Maendeleo ya Wanawake, the East Africa Women’s League, and British military archives, the authors ask where the historical knowledge about women’s participation can be located in the archive.