Abstract - The theories of rational choice have been abundantly used in describing suicide bombings performed by men but are shown to be limited and contradictory, especially with their notion of "symbolic posthumous rewards". When examination turns to female suicide attacks, gender is central to the analyses made. The latter then concentrate straight away on the private motives involved and revive theories of frustration that are indeed discarded in studies on male-conducted suicide actions. However, data available in Palestine, Iraq and Chechnya show how necessary it is to go beyond these two types of argument to put these suicide-bombings into their political context and separate strategy of organizations from the individual reasons activists, male or female, have for going through with their suicide attack. A determining factor turns out to be the links between emotional narratives emitted by the organizations around martyrdom and the horizon of expectation of actors.
