The Female Lead Page 4
LUCY BRONZE
Footballer and 2015 World Cup medallist
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR
Christiane Amanpour is chief international correspondent for CNN and, since 2009, anchor of the network’s award-winning nightly global affairs programme, Amanpour. Born in Iran, she graduated summa cum laude (with highest honor) from the University of Rhode Island with a BA in journalism. In 1983 she became an assistant on the international assignment desk at CNN’s headquarters. She rose to become a reporter at the New York bureau and, later, one of the network’s leading international correspondents. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, she was the first to interview British prime minister Tony Blair, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf and Afghan president Hamid Karzai. She also conducted an Emmy-winning interview with Libya’s former leader Colonel Gaddafi, and Egypt’s now-deposed president Hosni Mubarak. Currently based in London, Amanpour has been inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame and has been made commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire by The Queen. She is a board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Centre for Public Integrity and the International Women’s Media Foundation.
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I grew up in Tehran during the 60s and 70s. I have an Iranian father and an English mother, and am the oldest of four sisters. My mother was a stay-at-home mum – what we now call a chief household officer – and my dad was in the airline industry. Despite growing up in the Islamic world, I never suffered any gender bias and I was never given the impression that, as a woman, there was anything off limits to me. When I was young, I read a book by Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, Interview with History, which collected her interviews with everybody from Yasser Arafat to the Shah of Iran, the prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir, and Henry Kissinger. I found it fascinating but I hadn’t really thought about being a journalist; I always thought I would be a doctor because I was very good at the sciences.
As a teenager, I lived in a very privileged, cotton-wrapped, upper-middle-class environment, under a monarchy, and politics didn’t cross my threshold. Then I witnessed the revolution in Iran, which had dramatic and negative consequences for my family, friends and country. I was deeply affected by the blood bath that happened after the revolution in 1979. People I had grown up with – friends of my father – were executed. I was being told that everything they did was evil and I was expected to readjust my worldview. Instead, it was the beginning of my political awareness and I decided to go into journalism. I have spent almost the last four decades not only struggling to understand the revolution, but also all the other world crises that I have reported on since then.
When I started as a foreign correspondent, I covered the tail end of the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. My first big story as a foreign correspondent was the Gulf War of 1990/91, and then I covered Bosnia, which was a very different war. The Gulf War was a massive, US-led coalition to drive back an invader – Saddam Hussein, who had invaded Kuwait. Then, immediately after, I went to the Balkans – first Croatia and then Bosnia – and was flung into the kind of war that we see today, which is militias or governments attacking civilians. So that led to my reporting on the human condition in crisis. I am proud of my stories from Bosnia because I believe that we moved the dial by relentlessly telling the story of ethnic cleansing and genocide against men, women and children in cities such as Sarajevo and Srebrenica. Later, one of the most important interviews I ever did was with the president of Iran, Mohammad Khatami, in 1998. It was his first interview and many said that it was his manifesto for change and reform, and a game-changing moment in Iranian and global history.
I grew up at the time when Iran was a very tolerant, multi-ethnic environment. While the majority of Iranians are Shiite Muslims, under the Shah there was also a thriving Christian community and a thriving Jewish community, and Iran had great relations with Israel. In my mixed-religion and mixed-ethnic family, I learned the very fundamentals of tolerance and fairness and acceptance from a very young age. I never thought that life could be any different. Of course my parents – a Catholic and a Muslim – could get together; of course I could marry a Catholic, a Muslim, a Jew, an atheist or anybody else – it didn’t matter. But, through my work, I have seen that, sadly, issues of race, religion and identity are more prevalent now than they were and, in my view, the world has regressed in that regard.
I never suffered any gender bias and I was never given the impression that, as a woman, there was anything off limits to me.
I’ve always been very lucky – I have a huge amount of ambition and energy and a massive work ethic, so I have got ahead. I believe in helping other women to do the same, whether through mentoring, advising or sharing experiences. I use my television programme to move equality along. I am constantly looking for stories about the advancement of feminism and female authority as a way to redress the imbalance. If I can, I choose women guests, whether they are government ministers, civil leaders, doctors, artists or entertainers. I believe we have to help open everybody’s eyes to the fact that we are 50 per cent or more of the population and that it is high time – and past time – that there was a basic level playing field. Much progress is being made – for example, in Saudi Arabia, for the first time in history, women have been allowed to vote and have been elected, albeit to municipal positions.
I would still like to interview the Queen of England, the Pope and Kim Jong-un of North Korea but, most of all, I want to devote the last useful working years of my life to pushing the ball of feminism forward and to making a just world for all women; because until women are equal, it is not a fair world for men or boys, either.
Christiane’s Object
A photograph of my son, Darius. I have a great picture of him when he was four. He’s got his little arm around my neck and his head against mine. I’m grinning so widely and he’s giving the camera a knowing smile as if to say, ‘Yes, I know my mummy loves me.’ I married late and I had my son in March 2000, when I was 42. I never thought I would have children and having Darius was a major turning point in my life. He’s a fantastic, wonderful, amazing boy who also, I think, has an intrinsic sense of fairness – I’ve probably drummed it into him. When he was very little, we were at an arts and crafts fair in Vermont, and I bought a bunch of napkins with all these great sayings, and on one was written: ‘Justice not just us’, and I was constantly flinging it in his face – we still laugh about it now.
He’s seen different parts of the world through my eyes. I’ve taken him on several reporting trips, and he knows that life is about more than just enriching oneself. I wouldn’t be disappointed in anything he did because I have met bankers and corporate leaders who have a deep sense of moral value, and I believe that, whatever my son does, he will bring with it a sense of purpose that is higher than just self-enrichment and self-aggrandisement.
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR
Chief international correspondent, CNN, and host of Amanpour
BRENDA BERKMAN
Brenda Berkman is a pioneering firefighter. Born in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1951, she studied history before qualifying as a lawyer. When, in 1977, new legislation forced the New York Fire Department to open up to women, she sat the entrance tests. After passing the written examination, she failed the physical and sued the fire department on the grounds that it had been altered specifically to exclude women and bore no relation to what was needed to do the job. When she won, she left her job as an attorney and went to work as a firefighter, staying for 25 years and being promoted to captain. She attended on 9/11. Berkman founded United Women Firefighters and was the first openly gay professional firefighter in the United States.
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My mother couldn’t believe it when I became a firefighter. I’d spent two years in grad school studying history and three years at law school and I was working as an attorney. That’s what I gave up to do a job that required just a high-school diploma.
I was a law student, married, living in New York and working on cases w
ith my father-in-law’s firm. We represented women police officers who were suing the police for discrimination, and we were handling a case for the New York City firefighters. At that time women couldn’t even apply. All the firefighters I knew loved their jobs, which you certainly can’t say about lawyers.
I’ve always wanted to help people and that’s what the fire department does – when people are at their most desperate, they call us. It doesn’t matter if the call comes in the middle of the night, in a tsunami, or from a poor neighbourhood where no one speaks English – the firefighters go. So when the law changed to force the fire department to open its doors to women, I applied.
I trained for the physical examination like crazy, carrying my husband up and down the stairs, running, chopping wood.
I studied and trained. You have to know something about construction, building design, electricity, water – you never know what you’re going to encounter. When I turned up to take the written exam, the men were quite hostile. It’s hard to perform when people think you’re a nut. I’d always played sports, I’d run marathons and I worked out. I trained for the physical examination like crazy, carrying my husband up and down the stairs, running, chopping wood.
It was clear to me that my score wasn’t being kept properly. They weren’t crediting me. The exam had been changed and wasn’t measuring actual physical abilities. Not one of the 90 women who showed up to take it passed. I thought there had to be one woman in New York who was capable of being a firefighter. So I talked to Bella Abzug [the leading feminist activist] and to a lawyer at NYU, my law school, and we went to see the man who was in charge of examinations for the fire department.
He laughed in our faces.
So I decided to file a lawsuit. That entailed testifying under oath that if I won I would quit practising the law and take the job; otherwise the case would have been thrown out. Five years after I took the exam, we proved that it was not job-related and about 40 of us entered the fire department’s academy.
I knew that wasn’t going to be the end of it and the harassment got worse. I had death threats. I was followed. The instructors were free to do whatever they could get away with to make the women quit or get injured or fail. Just a few of us graduated on time. In the firehouse, the torture started all over again. I had formed the United Women Firefighters and been elected president when I was still in the academy. They didn’t like that I was advocating for women, they didn’t like lawyers, they didn’t like that I wasn’t from New York and they thought I was Jewish because I was married to a Jewish man.
They ostracised me. They wouldn’t eat with me, they drained my air tank, they messed with my protective gear. At the end of my probationary period they fired me and another woman, the two most physically fit in the whole group and the two who were most vocal. I had to fight another lawsuit but I was reinstated and got promoted.
They didn’t like that I was advocating for women, they didn’t like lawyers, they didn’t like that I wasn’t from New York.
Some of the men came to respect me and some changed their minds about me. If I had discovered I was not able to do the job, I would not have stayed a firefighter. But I loved it and I was inspired by those women police officers I’d worked with as a lawyer, by leading feminists and by the people I’d learned about in history who had struggled for social justice in the suffragettes or the civil rights movement. My parents, too, had always done things to help in the community, at church or volunteering at hospital.
As I got older I started to find that I was attracted to women. I am still very good friends with my ex-husband. I really like men. Initially, I was not willing to come out. I was already dealing with so much, simply as a woman. But to become a White House Fellow [a programme that takes leaders in their fields to Washington DC for a year as assistants to senior White House staff] I had to go through an investigation so I was out as a lesbian that year in DC and then when I came back I found I didn’t need approval as much. Some people harassed me because of my sexual orientation but some people had harassed me because I was married to a Jewish guy.
Any firefighter who tells you they’re not scared is not telling the truth. As you get older and you’re in charge of people, you feel responsible, whether you’re working that day or not; 9/11 was off the scale of all that. I honestly thought I was going to die and I was very anxious about the people who were with me. We’d gone from our homes with no equipment because it had been sent on the fire trucks. I got caught in the collapse of a 47-storey building at 5.20 in the afternoon – the third to go, which no one remembers. Living or dying was a matter of luck – who was working, in what area, who ran in what direction.
It was hard afterwards, because who knew women were there? There were still relatively few of us – only ten more in the New York City Fire Department than when I won in 1982 – so the odds were that none of us would be killed. But we were airbrushed from history. The narrative went back to the need to be saved by men.
I was sexually assaulted in the fire department. I lost friends who didn’t want to be involved with someone so controversial. But I also made friends. I didn’t become a firefighter to win a popularity contest. I did a job I loved for 25 years and I still mentor and advocate for women firefighters. I think I’ve been blessed.
Brenda’s Object
My fire helmet. It’s the first one I had, with my captain’s badge on the front. A machine replicated the shape of your head and built the helmet exactly. There were no chinstraps then. It’s got a big dent in it from when something hit me on the head, so it probably prevented me from being seriously injured. It’s damaged but it keeps going and it represents to me the value of doing things that matter despite the dangers and the setbacks. I would never have believed, as a girl, that I was going to become a firefighter. It represents the struggles of my adult life. It’s me.
BRENDA BERKMAN
First NYC female firefighter
LYNSEY ADDARIO
Lynsey Addario is an award-winning American photojournalist. She began taking photographs professionally in 1996, for the Buenos Aires Herald. In 2000, she travelled to Afghanistan to document life under the Taliban and she has since covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Lebanon, Darfur, South Sudan and Congo. She has been kidnapped twice, in Iraq in 2004 and Libya in 2011. Her recent work includes reportage of Syrian refugees for the New York Times and maternal mortality in Sierra Leone for Time. Her bestselling memoir, It’s What I Do, which chronicles her life as a photojournalist in the post-9/11 world, is due to become a Steven Spielberg movie starring Jennifer Lawrence.
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When I was growing up, we didn’t have many rules. I have three older sisters and my parents encouraged us all to experiment and be creative. They owned a busy hair salon in Connecticut and at home we had an open-door policy – I never knew who was going to be sitting in the kitchen when I came in from school. We met artists and people who lived on the margins of society, and it taught me not to be judgemental. For a journalist, that is an important lesson to learn early on.
I started photographing as a hobby when I was about 13, after my father gave me an old Nikon that a client had given him. When I was in high school, my mother’s friend, who was a photographer, started teaching me how to print and develop. I went to the University of Wisconsin and studied international relations and Italian and, after I graduated, all I wanted to do was take photographs.
I wanted to cover the war in Iraq. I had started to feel that I had a lot to say, that I could teach people and provide policy-makers with information.
I never intended to cover war. I was curious about people and cultures and, having begged for a job at the Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina, I used my camera as an excuse to travel Latin America. Eventually, in 2000, I moved to India and while I was living there, I started working in Afghanistan when it was under the Taliban. I had heard about the conditions for women in that part of the world and I wanted to do a photo essay on what they thought. Th
en, after 9/11 happened, I was poised to cover Afghanistan. I had already made three trips there under the Taliban so, to me, it wasn’t a terrifying place. I covered the fall of the Taliban in Kandahar and then, in 2003, I wanted to cover the war in Iraq. I had started to feel that I had a lot to say, that I could teach people and provide policy-makers with information. It became a responsibility.
I always use the women whom I photograph as a source of strength.
I was kidnapped in Iraq after I had been covering the war for a year and a half. It was April 2004, and we were driving on a smugglers’ route to Fallujah. The road was overrun by gun-toting insurgents, who had their faces wrapped and rockets on their backs. Everyone was pulled out of the car and we were taken and held at gunpoint for a day. They were trying to work out if we were part of the military occupation. In the end, we were able to convince them that we were journalists, and they let us go. The kidnapping was very difficult for my family. My mother was devastated and my father said, ‘Please come home,’ which I did for a bit. My parents realised that I was going back, though, and they didn’t try to stop me. This work had become my life and my parents were selfless in their support of me.
The second kidnapping, in 2011, lasted for six days and I was pretty sure I was dead. We were on the front line in Libya and tensions were very high. The men who kidnapped us were Gaddafi loyalists and had been told, ‘If you see journalists, kill them because they are all spies.’ They were hateful – from the moment they took us, they beat us and threatened us with execution. One of the things about being captured is that you are completely powerless and you never know how long it’s going to last, which is worse than the kidnapping itself.