Thousands of women across Iceland \u2013 including the prime minister \u2013 went on strike Tuesday as part of a campaign pushing for greater gender equality in the country. <\/p>\n
It marked the seventh time that women in Iceland have gone on strike in the name of gender equality, campaign organizers said on their official website. The first strike took place on October 24, 1975. <\/p>\n
The strike, known as the \u201cWomen\u2019s Day Off\u201d or \u201cKvennafr\u00ed\u201d in Icelandic, was organized to raise awareness about the \u201csystemic\u201d wage discrimination and gender-based violence faced by women in Iceland, according to organizers. <\/p>\n
Some schools and libraries in the Scandinavian country did not open their doors on Tuesday, according to Icelandic public service broadcaster R\u00daV. Only one bank branch opened on the entire island, R\u00daV reported, warning readers that its own coverage had been reduced due to its female journalists participating in the strike. Medical clinics in the capital area were only treating emergencies during the strike, due to end at midnight local time (8 p.m. ET), according to R\u00daV. <\/p>\n
In the capital of Reykjav\u00edk, a crowd of thousands of women gathered on Tuesday afternoon on Arnarh\u00f3ll, a hill next to the city center, according to R\u00daV. <\/p>\n
Jakobsd\u00f3ttir postponed a cabinet meeting originally scheduled for Tuesday, the spokesperson said, reiterating that she wanted to show her solidarity with Icelandic women. <\/p>\n
Female employees who make up two thirds of staff in the Icelandic prime minister\u2019s office all participated in the strike and did not come into work on Tuesday, the spokesperson added. <\/p>\n
During an interview with the public service broadcaster\u2019s radio station on Tuesday, Jakobsd\u00f3ttir stressed that the fight for gender equality is going too slowly. \u201cLooking at the whole world, it could take 300 years to achieve gender equality,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs you know, 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. We are still tackling gender-based violence, which has been a priority for my government to tackle,\u201d Jakobsd\u00f3ttir also told news site Iceland Monitor in an interview on Friday. <\/p>\n
The strike was acknowledged by government departments on Tuesday, and was backed by the country\u2019s largest federation of public workers unions, the Federation of the Public Workers Union in Iceland (BSRB), the Icelandic Nurses\u2019 Association and the Icelandic Association of Women\u2019s Associations, among others. <\/p>\n
\u201cWomen in Iceland are striking today, for the 7th time since the famous #womensdayoff in 1975,\u201d Iceland\u2019s President Gudni Johannesson posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, accompanied by a black and white photo of a huge crowd. \u201cTheir activism for equality has changed Icelandic society for the better and continues to do so today.\u201d <\/p>\n
Iceland\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a tweet Tuesday: \u201cToday we repeat the event of the first full day women\u2019s strike since 1975, marking the day when 90% of Icelandic women took the day off from both work and domestic duties, leading to pivotal change including the world\u2019s first female elected president of a country.\u201d <\/p>\n
For 14 years in a row, Iceland has been ranked the best nation for gender equality by the World Economic Forum (WEP), which said the country has closed 91.2% of the gender gap. <\/p>\n
Strike organizers wanted to draw particular attention to the plight of immigrant women whose \u201cinvaluable\u201d contribution to Icelandic society they say is \u201crarely acknowledged or reflected in the wages they receive.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jakobsd\u00f3ttir\u2019s government has previously committed to eradicating the gender pay gap by 2022. <\/p>\n\n
Thousands of women across Iceland \u2013 including the prime minister \u2013 went on strike Tuesday as part of a campaign pushing for greater gender equality in the country. It marked the seventh time that women in Iceland have gone on strike in the name of gender equality, campaign organizers said on their official website. The <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10571,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10570","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}