Leaders from the Australian Muslim community believe that the country needs more women in national security agencies to fight terror home-grown terrorism. Australia’s domestic spy agency and leaders from Defence too seem to agree.

The leaders believe that more women should be involved in Australia’s fight against terrorism. They asked for more women to be recruited, both formally and informally, in counterterrorism efforts. Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Director-General Duncan Lewis said that women should consider careers as intelligence officers. He said at a leadership conference in Canberra on Friday that the national security space desperately needed more young women.

Community leader Jamal Rifi said that Muslim women as wives, sisters and mothers played a major role in the fight against radicalisation. He argued that Muslim women were better educated than their male counterparts. He asked authorities to take advantage of that. Rifi added that Muslim women were given less credit for their role as they, behind the scenes, were much more effective than men.

According to Defence force Chief Mark Binskin, the national intelligence is a soft target for all terrorism related activities. If there is a bank robbery, nobody blames the police. However, if there is a terrorist attack, the blame immediately goes against intelligence -- he argued.

There are fewer than one in five members of the Australian armed forces is a woman. There are just 12 percent of the Army is female while the number is expected to be 15 percent by 2018. There are 18.6 percent women in the Navy and Air Force. The number is expected to rise to 25 percent by 2023. While the number of senior female spies is pretty limited, 41.1 percent ASIO employees are women.

Rifi earlier expressed his concern over the government spending millions of dollars on the prevention of radicalisation among young Australians. He said that the money was not reaching the grassroots. He argued that it would not be possible to win the problem by making laws and arresting people.

Rifi said that he was also concerned as the government might have plans to revoke citizenship for foreign fighters with dual citizenship. "It's not so good to shut the door so tight," he said at the conference.

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au

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