ABSTRACT 

British counterinsurgency thinking today remains strongly influenced by the Malaya Emergency (1948–1960) but little-known is the extensive women’s outreach program, pioneered by Lady Templer, involving the Women’s Institute and British Red Cross. Through discourse analysis of archival records, this article identifies four discourses characterizing British women’s participation, used, at the time, to make acceptable their presence whilst distancing them from the counterinsurgency campaign. By exploring how women’s presence has been negotiated and marginalized, I will reveal the blurred boundaries of counterinsurgency, questioning how the role of the counterinsurgent is constructed and sustained over time and for what purpose.

-Hannah West (2021): Camp follower or counterinsurgent? Lady Templer and the forgotten wives, Small Wars & Insurgencies