Unlocking the Mountain that Is Woman:
International Women’s March in January 2017
Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, I kept I hearing that awful yelling from men
but also, sadly, from a few women too.
That chant, consciously or not, may have been what brought out that Everest of women worldwide in Jan. 2017
The morning of the march, I took the Red Line with two women friends to the Boston Common. So many of us were packed into each car, I could hardly breathe, but I was already high. Then crossing the Charles River above ground from Cambridge, as the bright sunshine suddenly flooded our subway car, the women burst into singing “This land is your land, this land is my land.” Tears welled up in my eyes as I joined in. I wasn’t prepared for the joy and solidarity I would feel not only that day but for weeks afterward. The signs women made and the speeches said all the requisite things, but the force of that 2017 Woman’s March was foremost the passion of a moment when millions of women and the men who supported them all over the earth were saying in effect,“We are here, we stand side by in our own truth. We have been a powerful force since the beginning of time, and we will continue to fight like hell for all the wonderful things women are, for our rights, and against your lies and injustice toward us.”
The Woman’s March was not so much a march as a mountain—an immovable mountain of women standing their ground all over the world, speaking with one voice, “We are women. See us!”
Sure we demand no one interfere with our reproductive rights! We deserve an amendment for equal rights and equal pay; and medical, maternity, and family leave. Of course, you need to elect us to be Congresswomen and Senators, appoint us to corporate boards, name us as CEOs, finally elect one of us to the presidency of the U.S. We are here affirming all those rights, but above all world, see us women as a force of nature—a force of millions of us to be reckoned with.
There were so many of us; it took more than an hour to reach Charles Street from the rise at the far end of the Boston Common. There were lots of stops and starts and much laughter and mingling. No one seemed impatient—just content to be among the like-minded. The bright sunshine lit up our faces and felt warm though it was late January. Would we actually get to Beacon Street and start to march? The answer seemed irrelevant. It was enough to be here, to chat with strangers who felt like the family we belonged to before we were born. Moving fast didn’t seem to be important. After all, women had for eons proven we could move fast, think fast, produce fast.
Moving wasn’t as important being a mountain with millions of other women reclaiming a huge space on earth standing under our own sun.
This woman is mountain—she and the earth she presides over are one!
The spirit of our women’s mountain in January 2017 reminds me of an image of “The Lady of the Mountain” published in the last volume of an English translation of Icelandic folk-tales by Eirikur Magnusson and G. E. J. Powell, Icelandic Legends, Collected by Jon Arnason (1864–66). It is the work of the German painter Johann Baptist Zwecker. In a letter to Jon Sigurosson (11 April 1866), Eiríkur described the picture thus:
“The picture of the woman is to represent Iceland, thus she has a crown of ice on her head, from which fires erupt. On
her shoulder is the raven, Iceland's most characteristic bird, Óðinn, ancient friend and the favourite of poets, a great
and knowledgeable carrier of news. Over the seas flutters a seagull, but across the surf of time and history are borne
rune-staves to the land and up into the embrace of the woman, and she has picked one of them up. This is intended as
a symbol of our land of literature and history. It is night, with a starry sky and the moon up. Behind are mountains,
moonlight on the ridges.”
Since the establishment of the Icelandic republic in 1944, it has been traditional for a woman to play the role of the Lady of the Mountain during the national holiday celebrations (17 June).[1] (Wikipedia).
Iceland Elected One of the World’s First Democratically Elected Female President in 1980
For 16 years, Vigdis Finnbogadottir served as the fourth President of Iceland from August 1980 to August 1996. She also remains the longest-serving elected female head of state of any country to date.
The United States has never elected a woman president. Why is that?
