Holly Williams: Being a Woman in a War Zone ‘Can Sometimes Be an Advantage’

By Merrill Knox 

holly williams in iraqCBS News foreign correspondent Holly Williams, who has been reporting this week from northern Iraq, talks to FORTUNE about the advantages of being a woman in a war zone:

Sometimes when you travel to more conservative parts of the Middle East, obviously you are going to get treated differently as a woman than as a man. I have never felt it is a disadvantage. If anything, it can sometimes be an advantage to be a foreign woman in this part of the world because people are disarmed by it. There is such a culture of hospitality in this part of the world and people often feel sympathetic to you as a woman so they go out of their way to help you. They are less suspicious of you because you are a woman. When you are in the more conservative places, as a foreigner, you have access to both the men and the women. As a male corespondent, you can only talk to the men.

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