Daniel Mihailescu/AFP/Getty Images
Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, pictured in June, joined women across Iceland demonstrating for equal rights on October 24, 2023.
CNN –
Women across Iceland – including the prime minister – went on strike on Tuesday as part of a campaign calling for greater gender equality in the country.
It is the seventh time that women in Iceland have struck in the name of gender equality, the campaign organizers said on their official website. The first strike took place on October 24, 1975.
The strike, known as Women’s Free Day or Kvennafrí in Icelandic, was organized to raise awareness of the “systemic” wage discrimination and gender-based violence faced by women in Iceland, according to organizers.
Among those who took industrial action was the country’s prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, who told the news site Island Monitor on Friday that she would not work on the day of the strike and expected other female members of the government to do the same “in solidarity with Icelandic women.”
“As you know, we have not yet achieved our goals of full gender equality and are still battling the gender pay gap, which is unacceptable in 2023. We are still fighting gender-based violence, which was a priority for me. “The government needs to address it,” Jakobsdóttir said.
The strike was recognized by government authorities on Tuesday and was supported by the country’s largest federation of public workers’ unions, the Federation of the Public Workers Union in Iceland (BSRB), the Icelandic Nurses’ Association and the Icelandic Federation of Women’s Associations, among others.
“Women in Iceland are on strike today, for the seventh time since the famous #Women’s Day in 1975,” said Iceland’s President Gudni Johannesson Posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, accompanied by a black-and-white photo of a huge crowd. “Their commitment to equality has changed Icelandic society for the better and continues to do so today.”
The Icelandic Foreign Ministry said in a tweet Tuesday: “Today we repeat the event of the first all-day women’s strike since 1975, marking the day when 90% of Icelandic women took time off from both work and domestic duties, leading to crucial changes, including the world’s first woman , who was elected president of a country.”
According to organizers, Icelandic employers have supported the strikes in the past and have neither prevented nor reduced the wages of participating workers.
For 14 years in a row, Iceland has been recognized as the country with the best gender equality by the World Economic Forum (WEP). According to the World Economic Forum, the country has closed 91.2% of the gender gap.
Strike organizers wanted to draw particular attention to the plight of immigrant women, whose “invaluable” contribution to Icelandic society they say is “rarely recognized or reflected in the wages they receive.”
In a 2019 piece for CNN, Jakobsdóttir described how statements from migrant and ethnic minority women marked a turning point in Iceland. “They showed that while Iceland has made internationally recognized progress in gender equality, we have not adequately addressed the intersections of gender, racial and class inequities,” she wrote.
Organizers urged men to show their support for striking women by “taking on extra responsibilities” at home and at work.
Meanwhile, according to Jakobsdóttir, the Icelandic government is focusing on a recently launched research project on pay inequality between occupations traditionally dominated by men and those dominated by women.
“We look at how different these jobs are … because we assume that the existing wage differences are due to this,” Jakobsdóttir said.
Jakobsdóttir’s government has previously committed to eliminating the gender pay gap by 2022.