Only male voices were heard on Icelandic public radio early this Tuesday. The women were waiting for their turn to be heard in the streets of the country. Thousands of women, including the prime minister, and non-binary people across Iceland joined a strike to end pay inequality and gender violence. “We call for the revaluation of jobs dominated by women, such as health services and childcare, which are undervalued and much worse paid,” says Kristín Ástgeirsdóttir, spokesperson for the Icelandic Feminist Initiative (IceFemIn), which brings together the former parliamentarians from The Women’s List, a feminist political party active between 1983 and 1999. “We have known about the importance of this type of work for a long time but the covid showed it even more,” she adds.
Iceland is a world leader in gender equality. The island has topped the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report for 14 years. The island’s policies have contributed to this. In 2018, a law was passed requiring companies and government agencies to prove that they paid men and women equally.
But there is still much to do. “Despite the fact that we are known as a ‘paradise of equality’ there are still gender disparities,” Freyja Steingrímsdóttir, organizer of the strike and communications director of the Icelandic Federation of Public Workers, told Reuters. In some industries and professions, women earn at least 21% less than men, and 40% of Icelandic women have experienced sexual and gender-based violence in their lifetime, according to the University of Iceland. “The theory says that the more gender equality, the less violence, but this is not the case. Gender violence is deeply rooted in our patriarchal culture and takes time,” laments Ástgeirsdóttir. This historian, one of the founders of the Women’s List, gives as an example the Me Too cases, which also shook Icelandic society: musicians, actors and well-known men were singled out, she emphasizes.
Under the slogan “Is that what you call equality?”, they took to the streets with the aim of equaling or surpassing the participation of the first mobilization of this type in the country, the only one that also occupied an entire day, in 1975. In On that occasion, 90% of the women refused to work, clean or care for children, to express their indignation at their discrimination. The strike 48 years ago “showed very strong solidarity and was a warning signal,” recalls Ástgeirsdóttir, a feminist activist since the 1970s. She is the one who reviews the achievements: the first elected president in 1980, the aforementioned political party women (The Women’s List) and the feminist pressure exerted on the labor market and the government to achieve the milestones that have turned the country into a benchmark for equality.
As 48 years ago, women were also asked to delegate unpaid work. The organization suggested that parents take the day off to take care of their children. “The third of the demands of the strike is the so-called third day: the mental burden that many women endure when organizing housework, taking care of children and family members…”, highlights to this newspaper the president of the Icelandic Association of Women’s Rights (IWRA, in English), Tatjana Latinovic.
The organizing entities expected to gather between 20,000 and 50,0000 people (in a country of 366,000 inhabitants). Among them, the Prime Minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, who predicted a long struggle: “Around the world, it could take 300 years to achieve gender equality,” she said on public radio Ras 1. “The Prime Minister has recognized that It would not be where it is without the work of rights movements that have fought for women’s participation in politics for more than a hundred years, like my organization,” says Tatjana, from the IWRA. During the day it also seemed that the weather was in solidarity with the cause: “The weather is absolutely fantastic,” said Ástgeirsdóttir, who expected a high participation.
