Are women being relegated to old roles?

Smeal hopes that will help her organization's efforts on behalf of American women after the war.

Indeed, learning about the plight of Afghan women has helped some learn about women's rights in general, says Deborah Rosado Shaw, a business entrepreneur and consultant. She mentions that her three teenage sons never understood feminist arguments until recently.

"The reality of women in Afghanistan has changed their perspective of women here," Ms. Shaw says. Now they tell her: "Oh, this is what happens when the discussion [about women's rights and status] doesn't happen."

Ironically, in the midst of that awareness, the expectations of American women may regress to earlier times. Author Naomi Wolf suggests that in wartime, an emphasis on consensus-building and stability means the social demands on women change. The result is a "clamping down on women's efforts to [lead] more autonomous lives," she says.

It's a change with consequences for young women coming of age. "Visibility is exceedingly important, if not critical," says Ms. Wellington. "Every time a high school girl sees a woman as a leader, her horizons broaden."

There are, of course, exceptions to female "invisibility" in the media. Women in the armed forces have been filmed preparing for war alongside men, in an almost-casual way. Former Navy Capt. Lory Manning, who now works at the Women's Research & Education Institute, applauds that low-key approach, which portrays women "in the same way as men in the military."

The first time large numbers of women were deployed was in the Gulf War. A decade later, about 15 percent of active-duty forces, or 199,000 soldiers, are women, she says.

In military leadership, too, women are on the rise. Among active Army generals, women's representation has climbed from slightly more than 1 percent during the Gulf War, to almost 5 percent today, estimates Claudia Kennedy, a retired three-star general, the highest position ever held by a woman in the US Army.

Media coverage of this war doesn't reflect that. But when only retired Army generals are interviewed, she says, we can expect to see mostly men.

In a mirror of military demographics, police officers, soldiers, firefighters, and national-security officers are largely men - the "protectors," points out Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor of social and political ethics at the University of Chicago. If those workers were women, she says, they'd be thought of as nurturers - but the jobs would be the same.

Often, she suggests, women self-select out of these careers, in part because of the jobs' associations with violence. But protecting people is women's work, too.

Just as the military world is accommodating more women - and more women of authority - terms such as "hero" are enjoying a broader application. Since Sept. 11, the phrase has increasingly been used for those who have done extraordinary things regardless of their race, class, or gender, Shaw says. "We saw men as well as women who were part of the rescue mission.... Children are getting a different perspective of women's work."

It's an expanded definition that may be especially important now, in a war that casts everyone in the vigilant soldier's role.

"Not since the Civil War have men, women, and children been potential casualties ... at home, in this country," says Captain Manning. "The women seem to be handling it as well as the men [are].... Everybody's engaged."

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