ICELAND’s Prime Minister and tens of thousands of women across the nation have gone on strike for the first time in almost half a century calling for pay equality and an end to gender-based violence.
Women and non-binary people are expected to stop both paid and unpaid work on Tuesday, the first full day of action since 1975.
Katrin Jakobsdottir said she would stay home as part of the “women’s day off”, and expected other women in her cabinet to do the same.
Confirmed participants include workers from the fishing industry, teachers, nurses and politicians, bringing the country to a standstill in a bid to draw attention to the country’s ongoing gender pay gap and widespread gender-based and sexual violence.
“We have not yet reached our goals of full gender equality and we are still tackling the gender-based wage gap, which is unacceptable in 2023,” Jakobsdottir said.
“We are still tackling gender-based violence, which has been a priority for my government to tackle.”
Organisers have called on women and non-binary people to refuse both paid and unpaid work, including household chores, during the one-day strike.
%image('17365006', type="article-full", alt="Jakobsdottir with Rishi Sunak during the opening of the Council of Europe summit in Reykjavik")
Schools and the health system, which have female-dominated workforces, said they would be heavily affected by the walkout.
And, national broadcaster RUV said it was reducing television and radio broadcasts for the day.
Strike organisers say jobs traditionally associated with women continue to be underpaid and undervalued, such as cleaning and caregiving.
“We’re talked about, Iceland is talked about, like it’s an equality paradise,” said Freyja Steingrímsdóttir, communications director for BSRB, the Icelandic Federation for Public Workers, and one of the strike organisers.
“But an equality paradise should not have a 21% wage gap and 40% of women experiencing gender-based or sexual violence in their lifetime. That’s not what women around the world are striving for.”
With its global reputation for equality, Steingrímsdóttir said Iceland has a responsibility to “make sure we live up to those expectations”.
The walkout is being billed as the biggest since Iceland’s first such event on October 24 1975, when 90% of women refused to work, clean or look after children, to voice anger at discrimination in the workplace.
The following year Iceland passed a law guaranteeing equal rights irrespective of gender.
The original strike inspired similar protests in other countries including Poland, where women boycotted jobs and classes in 2016 to protest against a proposed abortion ban.
Iceland, an island of some 340,000 people just below the Arctic Circle, has been ranked as the world’s most gender-equal country 14 years in a row by the World Economic Forum, which measures pay, education healthcare and other factors.
No country has achieved full equality, and there remains a gender pay gap in Iceland.
