American military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 have had a tremendous impact on Moslem attitudes towards women in the military. Moslems seeing so many American women serving in the military and being competitive at it had a big impact. Some 300,000 American military women served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 700 were killed or wounded in action. Moslem women and men were impressed with these infidel (non-Moslem) women who were real soldiers. They wore the uniform, the body armor, carried weapons, and could fight. Despite resistance from many men, there is more pressure in Moslem countries to let women serve in the local military.
The Arab Spring, despite its "failure" to change attitudes and societies overnight when it erupted in 2011, is a long process and simply seeing so many women doing their jobs with no particular big deal can't help but inspire women there to claim their equality; and can't fail to encourage men who need half their population to really be allowed to contribute to their countries change their attitudes.
Cultural traditions can take a long time to steer to a better course, though some in the region will fight tooth and nail to resist this "collateral damage" of our military campaigns.
It's kind of funny. I've long said our military campaign is the holding action while the real fight takes place in the Islamic Civil War to define Islam. But unseen (to me) our military campaign--because of its length--has had an effect on the real fight.
