Editors note: This is the second story in a New York Times series about women in combat. Part 1 ran Sunday in The Bulletin.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE WARHORSE, Iraq There is no mistaking that this dusty, gravel-strewn camp northeast of Baghdad is anything other than a combat outpost in a still-hostile land. And there is no mistaking that women in uniform have had a transformative effect on it.

They have their own quarters, boxy trailers called CHUs (the military acronym for containerized housing unit, pronounced chew).

There are womens bathrooms and showers, alongside the mens. Married couples live together. The bases clinic treats gynecological problems and has, alongside the equipment needed to treat the trauma of modern warfare, an ultrasound machine.

Opponents of integrating women in combat zones long feared that sex would mean the end of U.S. military prowess. But now birth control is available the PX at Warhorse even sold out of condoms one day recently reflecting a widely accepted reality that soldiers have sex at outposts across Iraq.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first in which tens of thousands of American military women have lived, worked and fought with men for prolonged periods. As wars without front lines, they have done more than just muddle the rules meant to keep women out of direct enemy contact.

They have changed the way the U.S. military goes to war. They have reshaped life on bases across Iraq and Afghanistan. They have cultivated a new generation of women with a warriors ethos and combat experience that for millennia was almost exclusively the preserve of men.

And they have done so without the disruption of discipline and unit cohesion that some feared would unfold at places like Warhorse.

There was a lot of debate over where women should be, said Brig. Gen. Heidi Brown, one of the two highest-ranking women in Iraq today, recalling the start of the war. Here we are six years later, and you dont hear about it. You shouldnt hear about it.

In many ways, Browns career trajectory since the war began reflects the expanded role for women at war.

In 2003, as a colonel, she commanded a Patriot air-defense brigade that joined the push from Kuwait to Baghdad, losing nine soldiers in a maintenance battalion outside Nasiriyah three days after the invasion began. One of them, Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa, was the first woman killed in action in Iraq; Pfc. Jessica Lynch was captured in the same attack. Now, as the U.S. role in Iraq declines, Brown will oversee the logistics of withdrawing the vast amounts of military hardware in Iraq over the next year.

Weve needed needed the contributions of both our men and women, said Brig. Gen. Mary Legere, the director of intelligence for the U.S. war effort here and the other highest-ranking woman in Iraq.

Harassment, bias and assault

The military, of course, is not gender blind, especially in a war zone.

Sexual harassment in a still-predominantly male institution remains a problem. So does sexual assault. Both are underreported, soldiers and officers here say, because the rigidity of the military chain of command can make accusations uncomfortable and even risky for victims living in close quarters with the men they accuse.

As a precaution, women are advised to travel in pairs, particularly in smaller bases populated with Iraqi troops and civilians. Capt. Margaret Taafe-McMenamy, commander of the intelligence analysis cell at Warhorse, carries a folding knife and a heavy, ridged flashlight a Christmas gift from her husband, whom she lives with here as a precaution when she is out at night on the base.

Staff Sgt. Patricia Bradford, 27, a psychological operations soldier, said that slights, subtle and not, were common, and some were easier to brush off than others. Women are still viewed derisively at times in the confined, occasionally tense space of an outpost like Warhorse.

The issues that arise in having women in combat harassment, bias, hardship, even sexual relations are, she and others said, a matter of discipline, maturity and professionalism rather than an argument for separating the sexes.

Bradford recalled the day during her first tour when her convoy moved south while a soldier with whom she was then engaged to be married moved north on the same highway. She listened on the radio as his convoy came under an attack that continued after she was out of range.

For four days, I had no idea what happened to him, she said, but I still had to continue my mission, because thats what you do when youre a soldier. (He emerged unscathed, she later learned.)

At the outset of the war, the introduction of women into outposts like Warhorse raised fears not just of abuse or harassment, but also of sex and pregnancy. The worst of those fears, officers say, have not materialized.

In fact, sex in Americas war zones is fairly common, soldiers say, and has not generally proved disruptive.

In April, the latest iteration of General Order No. 1, the rules governing the behavior of soldiers in Iraq broadly, quietly relaxed the explicit prohibition on sex in a war zone, though it still bars sex with Iraqis and spending the night in someone elses CHU. Some commands, including Baghdad, retain broader restrictions, for example, on being in CHUs belonging to members of the opposite sex.

The chain of command already has to deal with enough, Taafe-McMenamy said. They dont really want to have to punish soldiers for dating.

Women do get pregnant a condition that, intentional or not, in or out of wedlock, requires the woman to be flown out within two weeks, causing personnel disruptions in individual units.

The Army and Marine Corps declined to say exactly how many women left Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of pregnancies, but it appears to be relatively rare and has had little effect on overall readiness, commanders say. At Warhorse, the 1st Stryker Brigade, which has thousands of soldiers, has sent only three women home because of pregnancies in 10 months in Iraq, the brigade said.

Taking on new roles

Roughly 1 in 20 of the 5,600 soldiers at Warhorse is female, a smaller ratio than in the military as a whole. Nonetheless, they are fully integrated in the bases operations.

Many of the women at Warhorse serve in jobs that have traditionally accommodated women: the base hospital, food service, supply and administration.

Others, though, serve on the brigade staff, in intelligence and psychological operations, which until recently were part of the Special Forces and thus off limits to women.

We have changed so much, Col. Burt Thompson, the commander at Warhorse, said of the Army, noting that every time he leaves the base, his patrol includes two women, including Cloukey on comms communications and a medic, Sgt. Evette Lee-Stewart. To have a female on an infantry brigade staff? Oh my God.

Like many commanders who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, he said that women have ended the debate over their role by their performance.

Ive relieved males from command, he said. Ive never relieved a female commander in 2 1/2 years as commander.

Enemy contact

The nature of the war has also done much to change the debate over combat roles. Any trip off the heavily secured bases effectively invites contact with the enemy.

Many women have also been pulled off their regular jobs and trained to search Iraqi women at checkpoints because of local cultural sensitivities, putting them as much at risk as any male counterpart. When Spc. Jennifer Hoeppner goes outside the wire at Warhorse, as going on patrol is known, she clambers into what she calls the best seat in the truck, the turret atop the Armys newest armored vehicle, the MRAP.

Im the gunner on all our missions, she said, having qualified on the M240B machine gun at an expert level. I think some of the males are a little confused when I go up, Hoeppner said. Theyre like, Whos your gunner?

Women are also increasingly attached to infantry and armored units that train and advise Iraqs police and military forces. Now that almost all U.S. combat forces have pulled back to bases outside of Iraqs cities, that training has become the main mission in Iraq.

The involvement of women in it has been a cultural shock for Iraqi men far less accustomed to dealing with women professionally, especially in the military.

Women spoke of inappropriate comments or uncomfortable flattery, and even gifts. It was everything from candy to lingerie, said Capt. Victoria Ferreira, 29, who spent a year with an 11-person squad training Iraqi officers. How do you react to that? Thank you?

For the most part, though, Iraqis seem to accept the role of women in the U.S. military they have even expanded their own ranks for tasks like searching women at checkpoints even if it seems unlikely that women will be incorporated more widely into the Iraqi armed forces anytime soon.

I think now, six years since the war started, theyve learned to adapt or tolerate the fact that in the American Army we have high-ranking positions that are filled by women, said Capt. Violeta Sifuentes, who commands the 591st Military Police Company.

It was not always so, she recalled of her first tour in Samarra in 2006. They always thought my platoon sergeant or my squad leader was the one in charge until I was like, Listen here. Im in charge whether you like it or not.

The captains remarks were typical. The women serving in todays military represent a generational shift. They are confident young women who have not had to fight the same grueling gender battles their predecessors in uniform did.

I never felt like I had to fight to succeed in the Army was how Taafe-McMenamy, who is 27, put it.