Are women being relegated to old roles?

White soot covered the television reporter's dark hair; makeup ran from her eyes. More than her words, her image told viewers something terrible had happened.

A woman obscured by soot and sorrow, she was bringing the news of Sept. 11 to the nation. But as the story and its aftermath unfolded, fewer and fewer women were part of the tale.

True, TV's images did show female soldiers alongside the men, neighborhood women who led a peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich campaign for rescue crews, and persecuted Afghan women shrouded in burqas. And after the terrorist attacks, women broadcasters were praised for their professionalism and compassion.

But beyond these anchors and the many images of women as victims or mourners, female expert opinion has been notably lacking.

Aside from the commanding presence of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, women leaders in the White House, the financial sector, and the fields of science and medicine have been mostly absent in the media, while men clad in suits, turbans, or military medals crowd discussion roundtables and stride across our TV screens.

The current crisis has produced "a parade of men in every aspect of this issue," says Sheila W. Wellington, president of Catalyst, a New York-based research and advocacy group for women in business.

In this high-profile time of war, the low profile of women's images prompts questions about gender roles: Have women's public roles shrunk in the midst of crisis? Have our images reverted to stereotypes of another era?

"We think women in the first two weeks of this crisis were largely invisible," says Marie Wilson, president of the Ms. Foundation for Women.

It's unrealistic to expect to see women where they aren't. But female leaders do exist; critics argue that they just aren't in front of the cameras.

"Media do not draw on women experts as voices of authority enough," says Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter.

At stake in this dearth of female opinion, Dr. Kanter says, is the public's impression of who can lead in wartime.

"Any kind of conflict at a time of unrest in society typically accentuates the fault lines that already exist," as it separates those with power from those without power, says Geeta Rao Gupta, president of the International Center for Research on Women. "This is an excellent example of that."

Politicians and experts declare the war on terrorism to be a struggle without precedent - and yet, in gender terms, there's a sense that it is a traditional conflict, says Ms. Gupta. Men's dominance in coverage creates an impression that it's "the men who are strategizing or fighting each other, trying to rescue the women.... In fact, it's quite the opposite." She adds that women in and around Afghanistan have long been fighting for freedom.

That struggle is one subject on which women are visible, vociferous commentators. Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, which for five years has campaigned on behalf of Afghan women, has been widely interviewed since Sept. 11, along with her staff, as authorities on the treatment of Afghan women.

"We've been talking about it for so long, we have credibility on the issue. People know that it isn't just because [of] Sept. 11 [that] we're chasing a fire engine or something," Ms. Smeal says.

One result is that, possibly for the first time, the Feminist Majority has helped to unite the US Congress where, currently, Smeal notes, "You even have opponents to women's rights, historically, speaking out for women's rights [in Afghanistan]."

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