When I tell climbing friends that this is a feminist book they tell me: But how annoying you are with feminism! There is a rejection of this concept,” points out mountaineer Araceli Segarra who, together with businesswoman Marta Duran, has published Expedició al sostre de vidre (Penguin Llibres). Segarra, the first Spaniard to summit Everest in 1996, and her climbing partner in this editorial adventure reflect on how to break down the obstacles that stand in the way of moving towards equality.
“Marta and I are neighbors in Cerdanya, we often share car rides and talk about female leadership, imposter and queen bee syndromes… Talking about all this, the idea for the book arose,” says Segarra. As they write in the prologue, they are aware that the literature on this topic is abundant.
His Expedició al sostre de vire is organized like the ascent of a mountain. Each chapter is a camp in which issues such as fear management, harassment, positive discrimination or motherhood are addressed. Segarra remembers how he has experienced different projects and expeditions in which he has participated, and Duran also uses historical figures, women who have marked changes, and studies that support the flagrant inequality that persists in the 21st century. In the chapter I have a coffee, she maca, she reels off a long battery of comments in work contexts that border on aggression, but, if the recipient censors them, she is branded as “exaggerated.”
Segarra uses the humiliations he suffered on an expedition to Broad Peak, in Pakistan, when he was 21 years old and did not understand what was happening, to talk about the profile of “emotional bullies”, difficult to identify due to their manipulative ability. There was no summit, the conditions were harsh, food was scarce and Araceli was the subject of unpleasant quarrels and recriminations due to the passivity of her male colleagues.
The mountaineer and lecturer resorts to another foray into the Himalayas to introduce gender equality. During the portages to carry the material up to the high altitude fields, she carried the same load in her backpack as the men. He considers that, taking into account that he had to measure and weigh 17% less than them, it cost him much more effort to drag the ropes, the food on his back… “It was then when I brought up the issue of equity, the weight must be distributed depending on what each one weighs and their proportions; In this case it would have been more equitable if I had carried 17% less load.” Her argument was “miraculously” understood at dinner time. Everyone was hungry and food was not plentiful. Then Araceli demanded to eat the same amount as them.
In the final stretch of the book, she addresses what she calls the Everest index to quantify the ability of women to climb and reach the top of a large mountain compared to men. She points out that in 2022 a total of 63 female mountaineers will crown the roof of the world while there were 559 men. “Not having the same salaries means less economic independence to be able to climb mountains, to have big projects. If we have a family, children, a husband, it is not well seen to ‘abandon’ them to fulfill our dreams,” she laments.
The day Segarra summited Everest he did not coincide with any woman at the summit. The obstacle course that he had had to overcome to reach the base camp was perhaps heavier and more complicated than climbing it.
