"Lioness" shows U.S. women on frontline in Iraq

By Claudia Parsons

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Women are officially barred from frontline combat in the U.S. military, but a new documentary shows that in Iraq, some are "out there playing GI Joe with the guys," as one female soldier puts it.

"Lioness," which premiered at New York's Tribeca Film Festival in April, is the story of female soldiers in an engineering unit who went on raids and house searches with infantry soldiers after their commanders realized it was culturally insensitive to have male soldiers search women.

In the film, one of the women, Shannon Morgan, describes how she felt when she first had to kill an enemy fighter. It also shows her struggling with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) on her return home to Arkansas.

The title of the film comes from the name coined for the ad hoc unit -- "Team Lioness." Known as lionesses, the women were caught up in firefights in places like Ramadi and Falluja, hotbeds of violence in Anbar province in western Iraq.

Rebecca Nava, a 25-year-old from Queens, New York, joked that Iraqis thought of her as a tiny "tinkerbell toy" because she is so short.

"We were also out there playing GI Joe with the guys and helping somebody out," she said in a joint interview with several of the women featured in the film and the directors.

"I'm ... excited to actually show what we did and have other people see it. Maybe more women will come and join the military, too. My sister did," said Nava.

Women account for 16 percent of all soldiers and 10 percent of deployed soldiers. While they tend to be assigned to non-combat specialties such as supply or intelligence, they often run the same risks as men, equally prone to being hit by roadside bombs or other attacks on convoys.