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Big women’s strike in Iceland for more equality
People from all over Iceland gather during the women’s strike. Countless women in Iceland stopped work for a day to demand more equality. photo
© Arni Torfason/AP/dpa
Thousands upon thousands of Icelandic women are setting an example for equality between men and women. The Prime Minister of the small country complains that progress is still too slow in this regard.
On October 24, 1975, numerous Icelandic women stopped working for the first time to set an example for equal rights. Since then, several action days of this kind have been organized. Under the motto “You call this equality?” The organizers now wanted to draw renewed attention to existing gender-specific inequalities. The focus was, among other things, on the pay gap between men and women and gender-specific violence.
The fight for equal rights is progressing too slowly, complained Prime Minister Jakobsdóttir in a radio interview. “Although the situation in Iceland is good, we have not yet fully achieved equality,” she said.
According to the current Gender Gap Report, Iceland is the country in the world where equality between men and women is most advanced. Germany was most recently ranked sixth in the World Economic Forum’s index. Iceland has held the top spot in this regard for 14 years and is currently the only country to have closed more than 90 percent of the gender gap. Nevertheless, differences still exist among Icelanders – and the participants in the women’s strike wanted to point this out.
Live broadcast RÚV website on the women’s strike Global Gender Gap Report 2023 live blog RÚV