This is an archive article published on October 26, 2023

Opinion Women’s strike in Iceland: A reminder of the arduous journey for gender parity

Express View: The lesson from Iceland is not that the ‘equality paradise’ is still faraway — it’s that the dream for it will never die

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October 26, 2023 07:26 AM IST First published on: Oct 26, 2023 at 07:26 AM IST

What do you do when a so-called equality paradise is still far from equal? The answer, according to the women of Iceland, is to go on strike — and keep on striking — until the yawning gap between the dream of paradise and its dispiriting reality is closed, or almost. On Tuesday, tens of thousands of women and non-binary folk stopped work, both paid and non-paid, bringing the nation to a standstill for 24 hours — the first of its kind since the historic strike of 1975.

Fishing industry workers, teachers, hospital staff, government workers, librarians and Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir were among those who were protesting the gender pay gap and gender-based violence in a country that is widely held up as an exemplar of social equality.

There are two ways of looking at the women’s strike in Iceland. The more cynical might wonder what hope there is for women in the rest of the world, if women in Iceland feel undervalued and unsafe. After all, the gender imbalance in terms of economic power, social status and political representation remains both acute and stubborn in many other countries compared to Iceland, which has topped the World Economic Forum’s Gender Report rankings 14 years in a row.

But it’s the other perspective, which speaks of hope and aspiration, that is worth holding on to.

The struggle for equality was never going to be easy — not in Iceland, nor in the US, India or anywhere else. For every success story, like the decriminalisation of abortion in Mexico and the passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in India last month, there are heartbreaking reverses, such as the abortion ban in the US last year and harsher penalties for women who refuse to wear the hijab in Iran. The lesson from Iceland is not that the “equality paradise” is still faraway — it’s that the dream for it will never die.