Women have been reporting on war since the modern definition of the war correspondent came into existence but sexism and gendered practices still exist in the field. Female war reporters use strategy of shape shifting to navigate the conflict zones: they switch gender performances depending on the environment and the audience, write Lindsay Palmer and Jad Melki.

According to their interviewees women can work the same way as their male counterparts but sometimes they must foreground their gender to engage female sources and to enter private spaces inaccessible to male journalists. Sometimes women reporters must also perform an exaggerated version of feminine weakness or tacitly accept sexist treatment, for example when it can save them from danger.

Article is published by Journalism Studies. Read the article here.

Picture: Carnival in Venice-32 by Stefan Insam, licence: CC BY-SA 2.0