A survey of jihadis in Austria reveal 21 percent of people who have either traveled to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq or planned on doing it are women.

The study from the Austrian Green Party and the Ministry of the Interior reveals 59 out of 280 prospective ISIS members are women. Close to half of responders who have been prevented from leaving Austria to join ISIS, 22 out of 50, were women.

“The number is unpleasant,” Berivan Aslan, a Green Party member of parliament, told The Local. “I did not expect the percentage of female IS-sympathizers to be as high as 21 percent.”

The figure in Austria is significantly higher than in Belgium, where just 17 percent of participants in a similar study were women.

Aslan said the idea of being the wife of a “hero” is appealing to young Muslim women in Europe.

“Disoriented young women in Western Europe feel attracted to IS-fighters and imagine that being on the side of a fighter building their own ‘state’ would afford oneself stability and meaning,” Aslan told The Local. “In the Islamic Statement, women are given the role not only of the wife of a ‘hero’, but are also used as fighters and suicide bombers.”

All-female ISIS cells have recently emerged in France, where a group of women were arrested after a car full of gas cylinders were found outside the Notre Dame church in September.

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