Let´s talk women in the more or less history of espionage...Automatically, it comes to mind the glamours of Mata Hari and the swings of Josephine Baker and some equally glamorous counterparts of James Bond. However, although unequally represented on the economy of jobs, women working in espionage, all over the world, mean more than that. And, contrary to the generally accepted stereotype, they can do more than being ´honey pots´.
A French freelance author Chloé Aeberhardt had the idea of writing a book about various women from all over the world famous intelligent services. A tremendous and not always successful work because of the secretive and sensitive nature of the work. The book was recently turned into short animated series on Arte that I just finished watching today.
Truth to be told, the life of women involved in intelligence is limited. The life of a woman in general is limited by family, children, family and house-related obligations. But more and more women are able to make it through and succeed. Because, in fact, there is no intelligence related job that a woman cannot do. Only that society is limiting a woman´s ability to outperform. Sometimes, women too are resigning to accept their limitations, which is also a matter of choice.
The women featured in the TV mini-series (I have the book too and hopefully will be able to read and review it soon) are former operatives of CIA, KGB, French intelligence, Stasi and Mossad. My favorite case, for her freedom is the hero of the episode Yola and Hotel Mossad featuring a former ELAL flight attendant, part of a massive Mossad operation in Sudan aimed to smuggle endangered Ethiopian Jews to Israel. The story was recently featured in a movie on Netflix, The Red Sea Diving Resort but probably the reality was even more complex than the fiction. One of the stories I never heard about was how the Manuel Antonio Noriega was caught out of the Embassy of Vatican where he took refuge following the American invasion of Panama.
Another woman featured in the movie is a former Stasi operative in the then West Germany that was recruted through the so-called Romeo-network of the famous Markus Wolf, the head of the Main Directorate for Reconaissance, the foreign intelligence division of Eas Germany´s Ministry for State Security. The so-called Romeos were Stasi agents sent to the West Germany to recruit women working in top/sensitive working positions. They were usualle falling for the boys and were further recruited to work for the East. At a great extent, the success of this operation confirmed the weakness label of women leading to women being considered as a liability therefore not deem of a trustworthy work within the security network, unless it involved sex. Gabriele Gast, interviewed in the movie, started to collaborate with the East for a purposely love story, but ended up working for convinctions, without accepting any payments.
It´s one of the many new beginnings in she-writing the history with a focus on female actors and although it is just a start, it´s worth continuing because it not only allows to make a difference, but equally create a space for new debates and understandings.
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