Sexual bias flourishes over there, and over here

We all know the observation about Fred Astaire, one of the greatest dancers of all time. It was said that Ginger Rogers, his partner, did everything Astaire did, except she did it backward and in high heels. For working women today, the sentiment holds true, but they aren’t just dancing.

Women serve in the armed forces, they command operating rooms, they build skyscrapers and they report from war zones. They still do everything men do, but with greater difficulty and risk to themselves.

Last week, Lara Logan, a veteran war correspondent for CBS news, was beaten and sexually assaulted during the frenzied celebration that followed the resignation of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Logan was one of many journalists, from all over the world, who put personal safety aside to tell the story of the tsunami-like revolution that loosened the Mubarak regime’s grip and then swept it away.

As citizens of the world, our best chance of understanding what is going on half a world away is to watch reports from responsible journalists who are courageous enough to move into the midst and become part of unpredictable, rapidly changing events.

Anderson Cooper and Christiane Amanpour and Katie Couric and Logan and Nic Robertson and Dexter Filkins represent the best of a free society. Our eyes and ears during this precipitous uprising, they offered the best chance of getting at the truth during a momentous and confusing moment in world history.

As imperfect as on-the-scene reporting can be, it is still the most effective means of conveying what is happening on the ground moment to moment, what people are saying, how they look and feel.

Foreign correspondents have always been the public’s most reliable source of wartime information, from ancient wars in Rome and Greece to the great conflicts in Europe and, in our time, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. What is different now is the immediacy of the reporting. There is no time to “file” stories; we watch on TV and the Internet in real time, as people collapse from tear gas attacks and fall in the streets, torn apart by gunfire and bombs.

One thing that has not changed at all is the courage and commitment required to place oneself in the midst of violent conflict so the story can be told. Foreign correspondents come by their reputation for being daring — sometimes carousing — cowboys the old-fashioned way: They earn it. But they do a dangerous job in terrible places under appalling conditions.

It must be said that the job is more difficult for women. Like women who break gender barriers in medicine and law and construction and military service, women reporters face sexual harassment that men simply don’t have to deal with.

Logan had difficulty being taken seriously as a correspondent in Egypt: She is a beautiful woman and she is seemingly fearless. She is also the mother of a young child, which prompted various hostile bloggers to suggest that she stay home where she belongs. Born in Durban, South Africa, she covered the war in Afghanistan in the days following 9/11. For four years she reported from the war zone, moving to Iraq and traveling as an embedded reporter with the American forces.

On Feb. 3, before she was assaulted in Tahrir Square, she and her crew were arrested by the Egyptian army in Cairo on suspicion of being Israeli spies. They were interrogated, blindfolded, handcuffed and held at gunpoint. Eventually they were released. But days later in the square, Logan was separated from her crew, surrounded and sexually attacked.

She proved admirable, yet again, by deciding to go public with her story.
Judith Matloff, a professor of journalism at Columbia University, has said that sexual assault on female journalists in the field is both rampant and underreported. Matloff worked as a foreign correspondent herself for 20 years.

She said that when she worked abroad, her biggest fear was rape, not death. She said she has interviewed some 20 correspondents who were raped and chose not to report it for fear of not getting another assignment. She added that sexual harassment of women journalists in Egypt is a longstanding problem.

Reporting from abroad is dangerous enough without the added sexual threat. Since 1992, 850 reporters, men and women, have been killed on the job in countries around the world.

It’s a great irony that sexual harassment isn’t limited to foreign cultures, in which bias against women runs deep and has a long history. Last week, 17 American women, veterans and active-duty service members, sued the Pentagon on charges of violating their constitution rights by “condoning, ignoring and implicitly encouraging sexual abuse in the ranks.” Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and current Secretary Robert Gates were named for failing to “eradicate a well-entrenched misogynistic military culture that permits Command to scoff at rape allegations …”

It’s ironic, too, that thousands of Americans, including the president, reached out to Logan last week, offering support, good wishes and praise for her courage under fire.

All this time, our very own military, our very own leaders, have been willfully ignorant of sexual harassment rampant in their own ranks.

Copyright © 2011 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 304.