What does sisterhood mean to each of you?
Amal: We have a lot of fun together.
Charlotte: A lot of fun. It’s really important.
Amal: Charlotte, as soon as she walks in the room, she just lifts everyone’s spirits. She is just so positive, whether she is with someone she’s just met for two seconds or her long-standing friends. I feel incredibly lucky to have friends like her in my life.
Charlotte: It’s honesty. Authenticity, honesty, altruism, compassion, kindness, and effecting change, I think that’s a driving force.
If you could go back and tell your younger self one thing—and pass your confidence on—what would it be?
Charlotte: Show up as your authentic self. I wasn’t always this confident. I’m sure Amal wasn’t either, but you just have to feel the fear, do it anyway, and believe.
Amal: I try to tell young people to flip their attitude from “Why me?” to “Why not me?” So they approach an opportunity not thinking “why would they pick me” but “why not”. I was lucky—I grew up in a place that was safe; with parents who supported me; and an amazing education. Many girls don’t have this start in life; they face very significant barriers. And it’s a driving force in my work to remove those barriers. I was born in a part of the world—in the Middle East—where many women don’t have equal rights and many girls don’t have the same opportunities as boys. And you see the data, and it’s more than 600 million girls around the world who are child- brides; more than 100 million girls out of school; alarming rates of violence against women – both in conflict zones and outside them.
So it’s been a driving force in my work to try to use legal tools to remove those obstacles wherever we can, so that a girl can start her life with the same chance as her brother. I think it also gives us a perspective when you watch young girls in Iran with a backpack on, trying to protest for their most basic rights, and you just think about the risks that girls are having to take around the world to just get basic freedom. It makes me think: if they can do what they’re doing, surely we can do a little bit more from where we stand. My work has sometimes taken me to dark places, but it’s also given me this perspective that I try to cling onto—that we’re so lucky and if we’re given this luck and this opportunity, we should try to spread it.
Let’s end with joy. Where are you finding it?
Charlotte: Life. Every facet of it. Gratitude fills me with joy.
Amal: The people I love—my husband, our children, our friends, filling our house with people we love. That’s the greatest joy in my life and what gives me balance.
Charlotte: Yes, in the end it’s all about love.
Samantha Barry’s Hair Stylist: Ellie Fox at Stella Creative Artists
