Young men are not the only British recruits to Isis. News this week that Scottish student Aqsa Mahmood had joined the militants sparked outrage. But what made her, and others, decide to go?

A young woman cheerfully tweets two British friends, “I’m making pancakes, and there’s Nutella, come up in a bit”. Her friends tease each other in response: “come b4 I finish dem mwhaha :p”; “oi … you have my back dont snake it”. Punctuated with emojis and slang, it’s hardly a sinister exchange, until it becomes clear that all three have joined the Islamic State (Isis) — and are using their social media accounts to encourage other women to join them in Syria.

As alarm mounts about British men who have joined the militants, including the man thought to have murdered the journalists Steven Sotloff and James Foley, experts say much less attention is being paid to an explicit recruitment drive by Islamic State members at the behest of their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to lure women and girls to the cause. And that too little is being done to challenge online accounts such as the one above on the frontline of this propaganda war.

Melanie Smith from King’s College International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation has been tracking through their social media accounts 21 British women who have joined Isis. They include 16-year-old Manchester twins Zahra and Salma Halane, and 20-year-old former radiography student, Aqsa Mahmood, from Glasgow, who exhorted Muslims to carry out terrorist attacks in the west. “Follow the examples of your brothers from Woolwich, Texas and Boston,” she tweeted. “‘If you cannot make it to the battlefield, then bring the battlefield to yourself.”

Smith says no one knows exactly how many of the 500 Britons thought to have travelled to Syria to join Isis are women, but believes there are around 200 western women in the country. However, this total has risen since the insurgents’ territory (swathes of land totalling an estimated 35,000 square miles in Syria and Iraq) was declared a caliphate. “There is a stronger pull now Baghdadi has called for all women to come,” Smith points out. She says the attraction lies in the chance to help found a new society, based around the fanatical interpretation of Islam that Islamic State promotes. “You can see the state-building process happen,” she adds.

Trawling through the online lives of the women who have joined the extremist group can feel like reading a web version of the satirical film, Four Lions – in which home-grown suicide bombers bungle various terrorism missions. They are a jumble of religious quotations, glorifications of murder, banal chat and internet memes – complete with Instagram-posted pictures of sunsets and ubiquitous photos of cats.

One woman even posts a selfie with two friends, all three unrecognisable under niqabs so full that even their eyes can’t be seen, one of the three holding up a black-gloved finger in an Isis salute. Another complains British humour is misunderstood (“no one else gets our banter”), before justifying the beheading of Foley. “So the US want to bombarded us with airstrikes in iraq and not give a damn whos killed” she tweets, “but want cry when a dusty journalist is killed? [sic]”

Yet this incongruous, peer-led approach has allowed Isis to reach beyond its usual channels. Prospective recruits can identify with the chatty, young, female jihadists, many of whom post messages saying how happy they are to be living in an Islamic land. Longer blogs, and the Ask.fm sites of foreign fighters, give practical and motivational tips.

Mahmood’s Tumblr page, for instance, offers advice to women thinking of making the journey. This week her parents said they could not believe their “sweet, intelligent and peaceful” daughter had travelled to Syria and married a jihadist. Now she has joined a tight-knit community of foreign fighters and their wives in the city of Raqqa, and seems intent on using her position to persuade other girls to join her.

She tells her followers everything from what to pack (“For the winter you will most need a good pair of boots”), to how to prepare (“get all the shots and vaccinations that you require”) and highlights the pragmatic reasons for becoming “jihadi brides” – “The reality is that to stay without a man here is really difficult”.

Smith says the profile of Isis recruits has changed. “The girls are getting younger,” she says – typically 19 or 20. Nor do they seem to be particularly fanatical in their piety. The first recruits to Islamic State had practised an extreme interpretation of Islam all their lives. The women responding now, she says, “are going for adventure, just like the young men”. Yet it is obvious from the comments posted online that many are also attracted to the idea of marrying a foreign fighter, seen as a heroic figure willing to sacrifice himself for a cause. The attention from girls and women has even led to some exasperated jihadists to ask their online followers to stop sending marriage proposals on social media, as it is not “halal” – or religiously permissible.

Clusters of women from mainland Europe have travelled to Syria after attending Islamic classes in mosques – from France a group of Chechen women emigrated together – but British women have tended to go alone. “The profile is very mixed across Europe. In the UK, many come from second-generation families from south Asia, because that’s the biggest Muslim community here. They are school leavers and a couple of university students, says Smith.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Aqsa Mahmood, 20, from Glasgow, who has travelled to Syria to join Isis fighters. Photograph: Enterprise News

Sasha Havlicek, from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, says UK women play an important role in Isis’s “brilliant” online communications strategy – bolstering the group’s claim to be fighting a “decadent and morally corrupt” western society, which has no respect for women. For this “video game generation” of young women, Havlicek says, the juxtaposition of hardcore brutality with “cuddly and fuzzy” propaganda (such as pictures of kittens playing on Kalashnikovs) is crucial.

“Al-Qaida tried to mainstream their appeal as they moved on to mainstream social media platforms. They did quite a bit of ‘brand cleansing’,” she points out. “The language was softened … and they sought to capture a moral high ground.

“Then Isis came along and promoted its own brutality, the massacres and beheadings. Al-Qaida expressly distanced itself, likely assuming it would undermine the jihadi cause. But the amazing thing is that it hasn’t.”

For the moment, however, it’s clear that women are only cheerleaders of such murders. Female members may tweet about practising shooting or post photos of their guns, but experts say there is no evidence they are allowed to fight. Instead, they are expected to marry, keep house and bring up a new generation – and strengthen the narrative that this is not a terrorist group, but a state all Muslims must join.

On arrival, women are either given a home – if they are married – or put in a house with other women, if they are single. Their day, says Mahmood, “revolves around the same duties as a normal housewife”, cooking, cleaning, and, Smith says, some also mention attending classes on religion. Much of their time is spent indoors, and when they venture out it is with a man, to shop at the local stores or markets, or Instagram pictures of themselves having the occasional milkshake.

Leaving their home country (without parental knowledge or approval), choosing a husband, and joining a tight “sisterhood” to live an “Islamic” life, is repackaged as the ultimate example of female agency, says Havlicek. Men and women, Isis says, have an equal duty to help create an Islamic caliphate and both gain status by being “martyred” in the process – or by inspiring their loved ones to give up their lives for the cause.

Not all of the women and girls are satisfied with this, says Smith. “The younger ones are very wrapped up in the idea of fighting, but they know they can’t go over the heads of the authorities.” On her blog, Mahmood, acknowledges this frustration, and that it’s one of the most common questions she has “been receiving from sisters”: “I will be straight up … there is absolutely nothing for sisters to participate in Qitaal [fighting] … No amalia istishihadiya (martyrdom operations) or a secret sisters katiba [battalions]. These are all rumours.”

Instead she stresses raising your children “for the sake of Allah”.

Katherine Brown from King’s College defence studies department, points out that there is a long history of women planning and executing terrorist attacks, from Northern Ireland to Sri Lanka. Organisations initially opposed on religious grounds (such as Hezbollah) have later allowed women to become suicide bombers or to fight.

“There is an assumption that radicalisation is something men and boys go through,” she says. “Statistics show that between 1981 and 2007 women constituted approximately 26% of all suicide attacks, and that there has been a marked rise in participation since 2005.”

Smith says there is a huge variation in the ideology of western Isis members, and that it’s a mistake to think all are calling for terrorist attacks in the west. She says no woman she has spoken to is considering coming home. “They see it as emigrating to a better life. They say they feel free.”

To date, British government policy has focused on women exclusively as tools to prevent men become radicalised. Sara Khan, from the human rights and counter-terrorism organisation Inspire, says women should receive more attention, particularly as many feel the UK is increasingly hostile to Muslims. With Muslim women more likely to be the victims of Islamophobic attacks than men, and facing barriers such as lower levels of employment and qualifications than the population as a whole, this can add to existing feelings of disenfranchisement.

Salma Halane, right, and her sister Zahra are also believed to be in Syria with Isis fighters. Photograph: Cavendish Press

“These young people are the 9/11 generation – and they are constantly told that it is Muslims in this country who are the problem,” she says. Media discussions of issues to do with Muslim women have not helped, “In the last year, the debates have all been about gender segregation, the niqab, hysteria about halal meat, the charity commission focusing on Islamic charities. That is really is going to alienate them. And they will look to something that offers them belonging.”

The older generation is more likely to rely on a culturally influenced interpretation of Islam, passed down through community norms and oral tradition, says Khan. Younger women may rebel against this, using religion to challenge their parents’ strictures on everything from arranged marriages to education. This can be problematic, says Khan, if they choose ultra-conservative sources as their guide. Such ideas have gained ground recently, she believes, while mainstream interpretations have been drowned out. “There is a feeling that the more hardline your interpretation, the more authentic it is, and that’s not the case at all — it’s just not true of Islamic law.”

Joining extremist groups can be seen as cool as well, while the lack of a sense of belonging has led to a renewed interest and identification with the Ummah, the worldwide community of Muslims.

The horrors of the Syrian conflict are cited as the motivating factor by many women who have travelled to Syria, says Smith. Khan agrees that anger about foreign policy plays a part in young people being drawn to extremism – something Baroness Warsi acknowledged when she said the British lack of response over the crises in Gaza was a “basis for radicalisation that could have consequences for years to come”.

Intense identification with Muslim sufferings abroad, coupled with anger about British foreign policy, can be used to suggest the Ummah is under attack, and needs defending. Mahmood’s parents, for instance, said she was desperate to help those suffering in Syria, and Smith says the anger about Israeli actions in Gaza could also help extremist groups recruit new members.

It is a problem Muslim groups are tackling, but experts say more resources are needed. Sajda Mughal from the Jan Trust, a charity that has run schemes helping marginalised women counter extremism, says too few parents are aware of their children’s anger about foreign policy, or need advice on how to channel it into mainstream political engagement.

Government policies such as Prevent made British Muslim communities feel that they were under surveillance and could not trust the police, says Brown. “Policing should be to serve the community, so they can then be trusted with intelligence,” she says.

Shaista Gohir, from the Muslim Women’s Network, stopped engaging with Prevent for this reason. Four years ago she was contacted by a woman who had left an extremist group – and told the Home Office, hoping they could learn from the woman more about the radicalisation process.

“You don’t often find women who break from these groups and who are ready to speak to you,” she says. Instead, the security services tried to recruit the woman as a spy. “They had no regard for her safety,” Gohir says. “If someone is brave enough to come forward, you should not try to exploit their vulnerability like the extremists do.”

Smith says social media accounts need to be closed more quickly to disrupt real-time updates from the battlefield. Havlicek wants funding to be discreetly channelled into supporting credible dissenting voices online. But above all, young Muslim women need to be helped to re-engage with politics, says Brown. “If you think no one in the political system looks after your interest, why would you listen to them?”

For some, the alternative is clear. On Ask.fm one teenage girl writes: “I have literally no money to come [to Syria], and I can’t take out loans … because I’m too young is there any way you can help?” The reply from the self-styled jihadists is swift: “Message us privately.”