"They all told me I was going to be a spinster because I'm travelling to Damascus to study journalism," says journalist and activist Zaina Erhaim.

When the civil war broke out in 2011, Zaina was in London studying for a Masters degree in journalism. Returning to Syria, she realised that all of the citizen journalists reporting on the civil war were men, journalism was still a 'taboo' for women. She decided to run training sessions for women who wanted to be journalists, but was aware that the obstacles they faced were enormous. 

Despite the war and chaos around them, together with the suppression that Syrian women face every day, many continue to risk their lives to get the news out. They have found innovative and creative ways to report the news and carry out interviews, whilst breaking down barriers of oppression.

These women deserve to be heard, and they deserve to be taken seriously.

Frontline Insight is a new opinion series from the Thomson Reuters Foundation in which speakers from the Frontline Club in London share their views on a range of topics.