Her Ms. Magazine essay on Iraqi women has been adopted for many university courses. She has been reporting from the Middle East since 1992 and has been on assignment to Iraq six times since 1997. Ditmars, an independent reporter whose mixed European and Middle Eastern ancestry often allowed her to pass as an Iraqi, dared to traverse the distance that separates most Western journalists from their subjects, traveling between two cultural worlds in sometimes dangerous and revealing ways. Unlike her male colleagues, her gender also allowed her a connection with Iraqi women, whose struggle she continues to voice.