Icelandic PM along with other women to strike against gender pay gap

REYKJAVIK: Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir will join thousands of other women on Tuesday to strike against gender pay gap and gender-based violence.

This will be the seventh time that women in Iceland will strike in the name of gender equality, CNN quoted campaign organisers as saying on their official website.

The first strike took place on October 24, 1975. “On October 24, all women in Iceland, including immigrant women, are encouraged to stop work, both paid and unpaid. For the whole day, women (and non-binary people) will strike, to demonstrate the importance of their contribution to society,” the organisers said. The strike, which is known as the “Women’s Day Off” or “Kvennafrí” in Icelandic, hopes to raise awareness about the “systemic” wage discrimination and gender-based violence faced by women in Iceland. Prime Minister Jakobsdottir told local news Iceland Monitor that she will not work on the strike day and expects other female members of government to do the same “in solidarity with Icelandic women”. “As 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,” CNN quoted Jakobsdottir as saying.

According to the Icelandic Teachers' Union, women make up the majority of teachers at every level of the educational system, including 94 per cent of kindergarten teachers, reports the BBC.

Around 80 per cent of workers at the National University Hospital of Iceland, the biggest in the country, are women. Iceland has been ranked the best country in the world for gender equality by the World Economic Forum (WEF) for 14 years in a row.

But it is not completely equal, with the WEF assigning it an overall score of 91.2 per cent. Around 90 per cent of Iceland's female workforce went on strike in 1975, seeking to highlight the importance of women to the economy. The strike prompted the country's parliament to pass an equal pay law the following year.