The Prime Minister of Iceland and women from all over the country joined this Tuesday in strike press to end pay inequality and of gender violence.
Icelanders woke up to news, presented exclusively by men, announcing closures across the island country: schools closed, public transportation delayed, hospitals understaffed and hotel rooms uncleaned.
TO Prime MinisterKatrin Jakobsdóttir, warned that will stay home during the strike of women – “kvennaverkfal” in Icelandic – and said she hopes other women in her government will do the same.
Icelandic unions, the main organizers of the strike, have called on women and non-binary people to refuse all paid and unpaid work, including household chores, during the day.
Nearly 90% of Icelandic workers belong to a union. Toward schools and the health systemwho have a predominantly female workforce, said they were being very affected in favor of the strike, while national broadcaster RUV warned that Reduction of radio and television transmissions..
The strike, which lasts from midnight to midnight, has been considered the largest since the first such event in Iceland on October 24, 1975, when 90% of women refused to work, clean or care for children, to express their anger over labor discrimination in the country.
In 1976, Iceland passed a law that guarantees equal rightsregardless of gender and since then there have been several strikes for a few days.
More recently, in 2018, women left work early in the afternoon, symbolizing the time of day when the average woman stops making money compared to men.
Iceland, an island of about 380,000 inhabitants located immediately below the Arctic Circle, was classified for 14 consecutive years as the country with greater gender equality in the world by the World Economic Forum, which measures wages, education, health care and other factors.
No country has achieved full equality and the gender pay gap still exists in Iceland.
“We have not yet achieved our goals of full gender equality and we continue to fight against the gender pay gap, which is unacceptable in 2023,” the prime minister said on a website.
“We continue to fight against gender violence, [medida] which has been a priority for my Government,” said Katrin Jakobsdóttir.
The country’s Government is divided equally between male and female ministers, and Almost half of the deputies are women.
However, although women in Iceland have managed to break taboos and rise to higher positions (from bishops to leaders of the national wrestling association), they still make up the majority of workers in the lowest-paid jobs, such as cleaning and Childcare.
TO Iceland’s economy is dominated by tourism and depends largely on immigrants, who, as a whole, work more hours and take you home lower salaries.
According to Iceland’s statistics office, around 22% of the female workforce was born abroad.
Much of the center of the capital, Reykjavik, will be closed to traffic before great demonstration scheduled for this afternoon.
Protest posters posted on social media challenge the idea that Iceland is already a paradise for women with the slogan “You call this gender equality?”
The 1975 strike in Iceland inspired similar protests in other countries, including Poland, where Women boycotted jobs and classes. in 2016 to protest against a proposed abortion banand Spain, where women held a 24-hour strike in 2018, on March 8 – International Women’s Day – under the slogan “If we stop, the world stops”.
Source: TSF
