It is important that Iceland maintains this approach in its effort to continue to lead as the most gender-neutral society. Going into the future, countries should implement comprehensive reforms to erase all forms of discrimination against men and women in the quest for gender equality. The next year, Iceland’s parliament passed a law guaranteeing equal rights to women and men. Although this 1976 law did little to change the disparity in wages and employment for women, it was a large political step towards true equality. The strikers had clearly achieved their goal and demonstrated the undeniable importance of women and their work in Iceland. The strike also paved the way for the election of Iceland’s, and the world’s, first democratically elected female president five years later.
The country’s first women’s rights organization formed in 1894 and collected signatures on voting rights petitions. By 1907, 11,000 women and men—more than 12 percent of the population—had signed on. In 1915, women over 40 were granted the right to vote, and in 1920, the country introduced suffrage for all citizens ages 18 and up. The idea for the “strike” was formed during the first Women’s Congress in Iceland in June earlier that year where the five largest women’s organizations in Iceland gathered in Reykjavik to discuss common issues. Women were being paid 60 percent less for the same work that men were paid, and were not being recognized for the contributions they made as homemakers. The Red Stockings, a feminist organization formed in 1970, suggested that women go on strike. Iceland is a particularly interesting place to study women’s history.
- NPR’s Leila Fadel speaks with Eliza Reed, the first lady of Iceland, about her new book and why her country is a great place to be a woman.
- There were no shifts or pre-scheduled hours.” As vessels approached, local boys ran or biked from house to house, knocking on windows to wake the women up.
- The equal pay law has strengthened efforts in narrowing the wage gap.
- These extraordinary women have shaped the history and culture of Iceland and have certainly inspired others.
- Ásta told me that one of the advantages she brings to the queer women’s history project is that she has a huge network of women that she can talk to about recent history.
I did my master’s in medieval Icelandic history and literature, and it’s probably not a big surprise to anyone that women are mostly footnotes and supporting characters in medieval history. Business IcelandIceland is a small Arctic country with gorgeous hot springs, lush lands and harsh winters. When an entry is published for the first time, we machine-translate the Open Text fields into all of the other supported languages. https://panithempfarm.com/2023/02/02/10-incredible-italian-women-who-made-history/ From this point on, the Open Text fields exist as fully separate (i.e. “forked”) versions for each language, while the Fixed Data fields are synchronized between all languages. If you change a Fixed Data field while viewing the site in any language, that change will be seen on the entry page for all languages. However, if you change the Title, Brief Description or Narrative text, those changes will be saved to only the Open Text of the language in which you are writing.
In 2009, Iceland became the first country to completely close the gender gap in education and health. And in 2016, Iceland was 87% of the way to closing the gender gap in all sectors.
What is the current mood like in Iceland?
The rest of the fields are either numbers, dates, or fixed options—we call these ‘Fixed Data’ fields. While viewing a case, method, or organization entry, click the red pen icon in the bottom right-hand corner to add to or amend the entry’s content. “I’m really thankful for our culture in Iceland for how open it is, how women are leading the way, and I very much want to be part of continuing that,” Davidsdottir said.
How Iceland’s Herring Girls Helped Bring Equality to the Island Nation
Women were in formal work for an average of 35 hours a week, compared to 44 hours for men. In 2008, 65% of women working were doing so full-time, compared to 90% of men. Many schoolteachers were women, so schools closed or nearly so. The walkout disrupted the telephone https://thegirlcanwrite.net/icelandic-women/ service, and halted the printing of newspapers, as the typesetters were all women. Daycares were mostly closed, because the daycare workers were women, so men had to take their children to work. Easy-to-cook meals ran out in many stores, as did sweets and items to distract children. The strike continued until midnight, when women returned to work.
The strike was orchestrated to raise awareness of the important contributions of women in Icelandic society, and additionally, it spurred people to action . The women’s absence from the workplace and from the home for the day was a very effective method to bring awareness to all that women did . The following year, a law banning wage discrimination based upon gender was passed . Five years after the strike, Iceland’s first female president, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, was elected; in 1983, the Women’s Alliance, a new political party, won seats in the parliamentary election .
The event was unprecedented because of the huge backing it had among women at the time, credited in part to the fact that the organizers chose to call it “a day off” instead of a strike. It is believed that as many as 90% of all Icelandic women participated in the strike, by either not showing up to work or not performing any housework. In the capital of Reykjavik, an estimated 25,000 women gathered to protest. Since then, Icelandic women have gone on strike an additional five times, most recently in 2018. The year 1975 had been dubbed the International Women’s Year by https://pozega.eu/italian-women-divided-over-the-prospect-of-far-right-female-premier/ the United Nations. During the World Conference the same year, the World Plan of Action for the Implementation of the Objectives of the International Women’s Yearwas adopted. At that time in Iceland, about 50% of women in the working age group worked outside the home and were also believed to do most of the housework.
By a lot of measures, Iceland is the best place to be a woman. The country has not just one, but three, laws protecting women at work. That doesn’t fly in Iceland, where a law bans gender discriminatory advertising. Plus, the country was the first to ban strip clubs for feminist reasons. When I asked Rakel about the future of women’s history in Iceland, her first thought was not the future of an academic field; she instead shared her thoughts on the state of equality and activism today. The Icelandic government has pledged to close the gender pay gap by 2022.
TheUnited Nationsannounced that 1975 was going to beInternational Women’s Year. A representative from a women’s group called theRedstockingsput forward the idea of a strike as one of the events in honor of it. The committee decided to call the strike a “day off” since they thought that this term was more pleasant https://vantu.website/the-lucky-date-is-one-of-the-best-dating-websites/ and would be more effective in engaging the masses. As well, some women could have been fired for going on strike but could not be denied a day off. Women’s organizations spread the word about the Day Off throughout the country. The Day Off event organizers got radio stations, television, and newspapers to run stories about gender-based discrimination and lower wages for women. It appears that this process did contribute to policy changes.
An outpouring of women on to the streets was, by then, a well-trodden form of activism. In 1970, tens of thousands of women had protested on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. In the UK, that same year, 20,000 women marched in Leeds against discriminatory wages. But what made Iceland’s day of protest on 24 October 1975 so effective was the number of women who participated. Teachers, nurses, office workers, housewives put down tools and didn’t go to work, provide childcare or even cook in their kitchens. Iceland is arguably one of the world’s most gender-equal countries. It is listed as number one in the 2016 best places to work by The Economist’s women index.