Women journalists—"chicks in the zone," as some female journalists called themselves—were responsible for publicizing the systematic rapes that occurred in the Bosnian war. According to the Bosnian government commission on war crimes in Sarajevo, thirty thousand Muslim and Croat women were raped by Serbs in the first year of the war. The Ministry for Interior Affairs places the figure at fifty thousand. Through extensive and ongoing interviews with rape victims, women journalists were able to tell the world about the brutal sex crimes committed by Bosnian Serbs. Largely as a result of these journalists' efforts, for the first time in history the International Criminal Tribunals court—which tries war crimes—defined rape as a crime against humanity.

Maggie O'Kane, a journalist for the Guardian, estimates that 40 percent of the journalists covering the war were women, many more than have...