Women across Iceland, including PM, go on strike for equal pay

REYKJAVIK: Tens of thousands of Icelandic women, including the prime minister, walked off the job on Tuesday to demand equal pay and protest violence against women, organisers said.

“On October 24, all women in Iceland, including immigrant women, are encouraged to stop work, both paid and unpaid,” organisers of “Kvennafri” (Women´s Day Off) wrote on their website.

A demonstration on Tuesday afternoon gathered tens of thousands of women in the capital Reykjavik, in a country already a world leader in gender equality. “For the whole day, women will strike, to demonstrate the importance of their contribution to society,” organisers said, adding that non-binary people were also encouraged to participate.

They said they expected men to take charge of the unpaid work that often falls to women. “For this one day, we expect husbands, fathers, brothers and uncles to take on the responsibilities related to family and home, for example: preparing breakfast and lunch boxes, remembering birthdays of relatives, buying a present for your mother-in-law, making a dentist appointment for your child.”

Icelandic women have organised the protest day six times since 1975, but this is only the second time since 1975 that they have made it a full-day strike, Steinunn Rognvaldsdottir, a member of the organising committee told AFP.

Some 90 percent of Iceland´s women took part in the very first protest in 1975, “which was momentous”, she said. Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir walked off the job on Tuesday and participated in the Reykjavik demonstration, her office told AFP.

“She will not attend to official duties and in that regard today´s scheduled cabinet meeting has been moved to tomorrow,” a spokesman said.

Iceland, a country of 400,000 people, has topped the rankings of gender equal countries for the past 14 years, according to the World Economic Forum, whose criteria cover wages, education levels and health.

The average wage gap between men and women was 10.2 percent in 2021, according to Statistics Iceland. “We always have to be on guard when it comes to our rights,” Lina Petra Thorarinsdottir, 45, head of tourism at branding and marketing group Business Iceland said.