"I broke the ice." A small understatement

It's been a day of being reminded of trailblazers for me and an inspirational way to start the New Year of work. The radio was on in the background whilst I was at my desk this morning and I was only partially listening. Then when I realised what I had missed I had to start the programme again. Towards the end, when asked by Lyse Doucet on the BBC Radio 4 "Her story made history" programme how she would like to be remembered, Vigdis Finnbogadottir said as being one who "broke the ice". What an amazing understatement. If you aren't a student of foreign political history, or if you don't have much interest in trail blazers, you may not have heard of Ms Finnbogadottir in which case she is worth a few moments of your time.

Not only did Ms Finnbogadottir become the first woman globally to be an elected head of state, in August 1980; she remains the longest serving elected female head of state in any country to date. Iceland has a history of being advanced in their thinking regarding women and the role they play in society. In 1975's International Women's Year, Icelandic women wanted to show how undervalued women's work was so they organised a general strike; 90% of women went on strike. They effectively closed the country down for a day, in industries such as newspapers (the women were the typesetters), fishing, teaching and those who stayed at home they all downed tools for a day. The following year, Iceland's Parliament passed an equal rights law. Ms Finnbogadottir was elected some five short years later.

With her understated words "I broke the ice" still resonating in my mind, my son came in and showed me the classical piece of music for today (he loves classical music and was given Clemency Burton-Hill's book, Year of Wonder for Christmas). As we listened to the piece we read about Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), she was a remarkable woman whose story I had largely forgotten so it was another piece of inspiration to rediscover her today. Not only did she found two monasteries, she wrote a prolific number of texts which varied from the theological to the botanical; she toured Europe, in what we know to be a very violent age and not exactly forgiving towards women in general, preaching in public; she wrote what may be the world's earliest morality play and yet still had time to compose music. If you haven't listened to her music, Spotify has a surprisingly good range.

So there was a woman, 1,000 years earlier also breaking the ice and yet here we are as we enter 2018 still fighting for real equality and listening with horror to the stories of abuse that continue to come out across a lot of industries. I am fortunate to have worked with and for some amazing women so far in my career, and hope to meet and work with more in the coming years ahead.

I'm inspired once more by the stories of Hildegard and Ms Finnbogadottir, we all need to continue not just to chip away at the ice we need to work together, support and promote each other to just bash it up! Happy New Year.