| Hi Rulers! Happy to be back with you all this week – and thanks to Anna for filling in last week. I got to chat with some very impressive women journalists for this week’s newsletter. Let’s get into it: Yonat Friling is an Israeli journalist — a field producer, based in Jerusalem, for Fox News. She was the first to alert the network about the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, after her father heard gunshots and called her — sparking the network's coverage of the tragedy. Now, after weeks of covering the conflict on the Israeli side of the border, she’s overcome with worry for the women and children in Gaza. “Since Oct. 7, I cannot stop thinking of the babies who are in Gaza, the mothers, the elderly women, the woman who has been raped, from the Israeli side,” Friling tells Women Rule. “We were talking to a medical professional in Gaza about giving birth under fire — the first moments of your life are under these horrible circumstances. It breaks my heart.” Friling describes the Israel-Hamas war as the “most significant story I've covered.” “I never thought that something like that could spark such a huge debate, and people who I truly respect and love would either deny what happened on October 7, or just dismiss any kind of empathy to the people in Gaza, who are my friends also.” Friling is one of what’s likely a disproportionately small group of women covering the conflict on the front lines. Hard data on the gender of war correspondents is hard to find, but anecdotally, the correspondents interviewed for this story say the field is still heavily dominated by men — though some also said that that’s changing, slowly but surely. Being a woman in this male-dominated field can come in handy — sometimes. Journalists traveling in Israel to report had to pass through Israeli military checkpoints. Elissa Nadworny, an NPR journalist also covering the conflict, found that when passing through Israel to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, she and her press team were more likely to get through without incident if she sat in the front seat of the car. Friling and her team used the same strategy. Nadworny chalks that up to women being perceived as less “threatening.” “Using that to your advantage — that's part of journalism,” she tells Women Rule. Susan Glasser, who covered Afghanistan for The Washington Post in 2001 and 2002, says she was also considered unassuming — and that her gender was both a help and a hindrance. “Afghanistan is a unique country because of the extreme conditions for women who live there and as a result, also for female reporters. You suffer the problem of being a woman in a society where women were not given anything like an equal role.” But her gender also meant that she could talk to women civilians — unlike her husband, Peter Baker, who was also covering the conflict for the Post and who was able to “interact with very few women, if any at all.” Like Glasser, NPR journalist Arezou Rezvani says that having women on the front lines also sometimes makes certain stories, which could not be written by men, possible. She’s been covering the Israel-Hamas conflict, but she also covered Afghanistan — where she was able to interview the widow of a former Taliban fighter. “My male colleague was not allowed in the women’s wing of the house,” she tells Women Rule via email. “Given how much women have gained and lost in Afghanistan over the years, being able to sit with them, hear from them, learn from them is essential in getting a full picture of where that country is headed next.” Conditions for women in Afghanistan have been rapidly declining since the Taliban retook control of the country in 2021 — also making it more dangerous to report there as a woman. Now, the Taliban has imposed restrictions specifically targeting women journalists — barring them from interviewing male government officials and from participating in press conferences without a male chaperone, according to a VOA report. “I think it just depends on where you are in the world and how that place in the world views women because that's how you will be viewed,” says Theola DeBose, who covered Iraq for The Washington Post in 2003 — though she noted, at the time, she was generally treated well while covering the war. For her coverage of the Iraq war, DeBose was named the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Emerging Journalist of the Year. It’s important to have women reporters on the ground everywhere, says the BBC’s Sola Tayo, a senior news editor for BBC Language Services who works with the teams operating on the ground in the Middle East. She said that she has needed women reporters to take the lead on some of the network's Iran coverage, because “that was the best means of getting access to certain people,” and that “it happens with stories in Africa as well, with some traumatized women.” Several correspondents — like Friling — say that memories of the women affected by war stuck with them the most. Glasser recalls talking to a woman shortly after the Taliban fell in 2001, who had run an underground school for girls during the Taliban’s reign. “She was probably one of the bravest people I ever met,” says Glasser. “It really made an indelible impression on me.” For NPR’s Nadworny, that form of connection is what makes all the difference. She says that when women face pushback for wanting to cover conflict, it’s often implied that they’re too “dainty” or unable to “handle something intense.” “I just think that the depth of our empathy is actually a f****** strength.”
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