The New York Review of Books has an excellent piece by Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News on women who are caught up in war and who go to report on it:

Any female reporter who covers the Middle East is asked if it’s a disadvantage to be a woman, but Westerners rarely ask about the advantages, which often apply even more to Arab than foreign women. In countries like Syria and Iraq, you can disappear into the background and are rarely seen as a threat in the way men may be. Wearing the hijab is useful because you look like other women, so you can get through roadblocks where you might be stopped if the gunmen suspected you of being a reporter. But there are techniques you need to learn. “Running in an abaya was a special skill that we honed each time we had to take cover,” writes Hannah Allam, an Arab-American journalist who reported for McClatchy Newspapers during the Iraq war. “You use your left hand to hold the silky fabric under your chin to keep it in place and your right hand to hike up the bottom to free your feet. Then you run in a zigzag pattern to avoid giving a clear shot to the snipers.”