Teachers, fishermen, bankers, nurses and the Prime Minister. On Tuesday, Icelandic women across all professions will walk out of work en masse to draw attention to the persistent gender pay gap and gender-based and sexual violence in the country.
Iceland is considered a world leader in gender equality. The country has been at the top since 2009 the global ranking of the World Economic Forum, which means that the gender gap is smallest there according to this report. Iceland’s arrangements for parental leave and childcare are viewed with admiration worldwide. Yet the gender pay gap is 21 percent and research shows that 40 percent of Icelandic women experience gender-based or sexual violence in their lives.
“We are not done yet,” says Freyja Steingrímsdottír on the phone, “this is not equality.” Steingrímsgottír is one of the strike organizers and communications director at BSRB, the largest federation of public trade unions in Iceland. She sees how Iceland’s status as an equality paradise is hindering the progress of gender equality in the country. “We are complacent because of our status. We no longer feel the need to fight.”
Chaos
According to Steingrímsdottír, the strike is an opportunity to wake up women in Iceland again. Although women in Iceland demonstrate annually on October 24, this is the first all-day strike since 1975. In 1975, as many as 90 percent of Icelandic women left their jobs, causing chaos. For example, telephone services came to a virtual standstill; newspapers had to close because the typesetters were women; and schools closed because 65 percent of teachers were women.
Soon after the action, Iceland passed its first gender equality law and shortly afterwards the country elected its first female president – the world’s first democratically elected female head of state.
Steingrímsdottír hopes that the strike will also have concrete consequences this year: “The biggest step in closing the wage gap would be to increase wages in sectors dominated by women.” Research shows that jobs traditionally associated with women, such as cleaning and caregiving, are still undervalued and underpaid in Iceland.
But the campaign is not just about paid work, the organizer emphasizes: “Women still often have the most responsibility for raising children. They do most of the housework.” The purpose of the strike is also to expose the importance of that work.
To this end, the organizers use the feminist theory of the different ‘shifts’ that women work. The first shift refers to one’s paid job. In addition, there is a second shift of caring for family and unpaid work in the household. The so-called third shift is about the mental work that women often undertake. Steingrímsdottír: “Women should not go to the office on Tuesday, but neither should they take care of the children or think about a birthday present for their mother-in-law.”
Inequality
The stratification of inequality is in any case central to the strike this year. The 37 organizations that took the initiative also emphasize the connection between economic forms of inequality, such as the wage gap, and social forms, such as gender-based and sexual violence.
“It’s all connected,” says Steingrímsdottír, “that’s why we call on not only women to strike, but also non-binary people, for example. We are all fighting the same systematic inequality and the influence of patriarchy.”
She is happy that the campaign is receiving so much attention and hopes that a historic number of women will participate. Government agencies and major Icelandic companies have already reported supporting the strike. Many shops will also keep their doors closed on Tuesday, as will schools and daycare centers.