(Húsavík) Iceland’s prime minister and women across the island nation went on strike Tuesday to end pay inequality and gender-based violence.
Icelanders woke up to all-male anchor teams announcing lockdowns across the country: closed schools, delayed public transportation, understaffed hospitals and uncleaned hotel rooms.
Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdóttir announced that she would stay at home as part of the women’s strike. She said she hopes other women in her government will do the same.
Icelandic unions, the main organizers of the strike, called on women and non-binary people to refuse paid and unpaid work, including household chores, for the day. Around 90% of Icelandic workers are unionized.
Schools and the health system, which is predominantly female-staffed, said they would be hit hard by the walkout. National broadcaster RUV announced that it was reducing its television and radio broadcasts for the day.
Tuesday’s strike, which lasts from midnight to midnight, is considered the largest since the first such event in Iceland on October 24, 1975, when 90% of women refused to work, do housework or work. take care of their children, to express their anger at discrimination in the workplace. In 1976, Iceland passed a law guaranteeing equal rights regardless of gender.
Since then, there have been several one-day partial strikes, the last in 2018, with women walking off the job in the early afternoon, symbolizing the time of day when women, on average, stop earning their salary compared to men.
Iceland, an island of about 380,000 located just below the Arctic Circle, has been ranked for 14 consecutive years as the world’s most equal country by the World Economic Forum, which measures wages, education, health care and other factors. No country has achieved full equality and there remains a gender pay gap in Iceland.
“We have not yet achieved our goals of full gender equality and we are still tackling the gender pay gap, which is unacceptable in 2023,” the Prime Minister told the mbl news site. is. “We continue to combat gender-based violence, which is a priority for my government. »
His cabinet is split evenly between male and female ministers, and almost half of the lawmakers in Iceland’s parliament are women.
But while Icelandic women have pushed or broken the glass ceiling to reach the highest positions, the lowest-paid jobs, such as housekeeping and childcare, are still predominantly held by women.
This work, essential to Iceland’s tourism-dominated economy, relies heavily on immigrants, who, on the whole, work longer hours and earn the lowest wages. About 22% of the female workforce is foreign-born, according to Statistics Iceland.