Iceland's PM joins strike for full gender equality

Marking the first strike of its kind in half a century, tens of thousands of Icelandic women, including the prime minister, staged a walkout and rally in the capital Reykjavik on Tuesday to protest the country's systematic gender pay gap and gender-based violence.

Dubbed Kvennafri or Women's Day Off, the 24-hour work stoppage, also involving nonbinary individuals, called for pay equality and action on gender-based violence while underscoring women's significant contributions to society, said organizers.

Men were asked not to participate in the rally but to "show their support in action by taking on additional responsibilities at home".

Schools and libraries across the small island nation either closed or operated on limited hours as female staff joined the strike, while hospitals announced they would only handle emergency cases, Reuters reported.

In a display of solidarity across professions, Iceland's Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir joined fishers, teachers, and nurses in the country's first full-day women's strike since 1975, canceling her Cabinet meeting in a stance against gender inequality.

The prime minister said progress toward equality is taking too long, both in Iceland and around the world.

"First and foremost, I am showing solidarity with Icelandic women with this," she told news website mbl.is.

"We have not yet reached our goals of full gender equality and we are still tackling the gender-based wage gap, which is unacceptable in 2023," Jakobsdottir said. "We are still tackling gender-based violence, which has been a priority for my government to tackle."

She added: "I will not work this day, as I expect all the women (in Cabinet) will do as well."

Iceland has topped the World Economic Forum's global gender gap rankings for 14 consecutive years and has long been regarded as a global leader in gender equality.

Despite this, many jobs continue to be undervalued and underpaid, said strike organizers, who also highlighted that unpaid work such as childcare most often falls on women.

Even with an equal gender split in Jakobsdottir's Cabinet and nearly half of the lawmakers in Iceland's Parliament, the Althingi, being women, the reality remains that women predominantly occupy the lowest-paying jobs, they said.

"We're talked about, Iceland is talked about, like it's an equality paradise," said Freyja Steingrimsdottir, communications director of the Icelandic Federation for Public Workers. "But an equality paradise should not have a 21 percent wage gap and 40 percent of women experiencing gender-based or sexual violence in their lifetime. That's not what women around the world are striving for."

To tackle the wage gap, the strike called for rates of pay to be published in those jobs mostly held by women, alongside stronger action on gender-based and sexual violence that squarely focuses on the culprits.