REYKJAVÍK, ICELAND - I was at head office of the company I work for last week, located in Iceland's capital city of Reykjavík, and something really struck me about halfway through the first day of meetings: I was one of the only men in the meeting. I was always aware that my company had a large number of women on staff, including at the company's headquarters, but this meeting had about 29 attendees, only four of which were men, including myself. It shouldn't be surprising of course. Iceland is home to the world's first democratically directly-elected female president, Vigdís Finbogadóttir. They also had the world's first openly gay head of government when Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir rose to power as prime minister in 2009.
The following day of meetings was a bit smaller, but again majority female by a long shot with 12 attendees, two of which were men. It was refreshing to see, and it made me very proud to work for the company.
I headed back to my hotel that night and in reading the news, realized that the first day of meetings was also a big day in Icelandic national politics, as a new coalition government had been formed after national elections, and was set to take office that day. It was to be led by - ANOTHER WOMAN! Iceland's second-ever female prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, leader of the Left-Greens, and also an Icelandic crime thriller expert, music video star, and Iceland's most trusted politician.
The next day on my flight back to the USA, it was an awesome and pleasant surprise that as we were landing we heard the traditional "thanks for flying" message from the cockpit, and the voice was that of ... SHOCK HORROR ... a woman! Our first officer is female! Holy cow, the sweet smell of diversity feels like an ACTUAL, WORKING AND FUNCTIONING EXAMPLE of it working here in Iceland, despite all the naysayers. Who knows if gender is why it works, but it all felt quite genuine.
Then I get home and read an article about the recent Iceland Airwaves festival early last month, and learn one of the top highlights of the entire festival was from this band known as Hórmónar, whose "songs are usually like a female orgasm; there’s no one big explosion, but many high points." I checked them out online, and low and behold, these young women seem to have something special going on.
So what's the point of all this? I guess either Iceland is full of incredibly strong, confident and powerful women, or all good roads lead to excellent punk rock. Or maybe both.
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