Women's Day Off in Iceland - October 24, 1975

On this day in 1975, women in Iceland went on strike to protest their low wages and emphasize the value of women's work. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi, I'm Eves and you're listening to This
Day in History Class, a show that makes time travel
a little bit easier. Today is October. The day was

(00:24):
October nineteen seventy An estimated of women in Iceland went
on strike to show how integral their work was to
the success of the economy and society. The United Nations
designated nineteen seventy five International Women's Year, but at the time,
women in Iceland still earned around less than men. A

(00:48):
radical feminist group called the Red Stockings proposed putting on
a strike to protest low pay and emphasize the importance
of women's work inside and outside of the home. A
committee with representatives from five women's organizations in Iceland that
was set up to organize events for International Women's Year
agreed to the strike. The strike was marketed as Women's

(01:10):
Day Off, since calling it a day off was more
palatable to employers, would appeal to more people who might
be penalized for striking, and would likely get more media support.
The organizers chose United Nations Day October to conduct the strike.
The New York Times reported that many men treated the

(01:30):
strike as a joke when it was first announced, but
on October twenty, women across the country took the day
off from their paid jobs and their work at home
to gather in the streets. An estimated twenty thousand women
rallied in Reikjavik, the capital of Iceland, to listen to
speeches saying and protest the undervaluing of their work. At

(01:52):
the time, the population of Iceland was two d and
twenty thousand. Because so many people skipped their jobs for
the day, industries shut down, newspapers were not printed since
most typesetters were women, Schools were partially or completely closed,
and telephone services went down. Airlines had to cancel flights

(02:12):
due to a lack of flight attendants, and bank executives
worked as tellers for the day. Fish factories, nurseries and
shops also shut down or operated at reduced capacity for
the day. Many companies had to arrange for men to
bring their children into their jobs. When women operating the
presses at Morgan blotted a conservative newspaper, returned to work

(02:34):
at midnight. The next day's paper was shorter than usual
and was solely about the strike. Iceland has had an
act when equal pay for equal work since nineteen sixty one,
but the gender pay gap persisted, and the Gender Equality
Council was formed in Iceland. In nineteen seventy six, Parliament
passed the Gender Equality Act, which prohibited gender discrimination in

(02:58):
workplaces in schools, stating that men and women should be
paid equally for work of equal value. The act didn't
change gender disparity and wages and employment in a major
way immediately, but the protest did achieve its goal of
disrupting society so that people were compelled to think about
the value of women's work. Big Dish Fibo Adote became

(03:21):
Iceland's and Europe's first democratically directly elected female president in
nineteen eighty. Since the nineteen seventy five strike, Icelandic women
have continued to leave work early in protest of flow pay.
There is still a gender pay gap in Iceland. I'm
each Deaf code and hopefully you know a little more

(03:42):
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(04:02):
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