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.
Countless women in Iceland stopped work for a day to demand more equality. 48 years after the first major women’s strike of this kind, thousands of Icelandic women came together for a large rally in the capital Reykjavik alone on Tuesday afternoon, as a live broadcast by the radio station RÚV showed. Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir had also announced that she wanted to take part in the strike. A number of kindergartens, schools, banks and other institutions remained closed throughout the day.
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, there are still differences 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
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
