‘Female engagement’ has come to be understood as female soldiers on patrol, searching, intelligence gathering and winning the consent of the indigenous female population.  I will be exploring how it is differently understood through the formal and informal discourses of the military, diplomatic, development and humanitarian communities in the context of British counterinsurgency.  In addition to a contemporary study of the Afghanistan campaign, I will be including a historical perspective looking at the women’s outreach programmes of the Malaya campaign.