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Iceland’s shops ran out of sausages on that day in 1975. On 24 October, Icelandic women went on strike for the day to “demonstrate the indispensable work of women for Iceland’s economy and society”. Employers prepared for the day without women by buying sweets, pencils, and paper to entertain the children who would be brought into work by their fathers. As a result, sausages, a popular meal, reportedly sold out in many stores that day.
We are still awaiting news on the sales pattern of sausages and other ready-to-eat foodstuffs in Iceland earlier this week – on 24th Oct 2023 – in the wake of yet another strike by women seeking wage parity with men, and the cessation of gender discrimination and sexual violence.
But Iceland? We thought it was cool to be the fairer sex in Iceland, a country just south of the Arctic Circle, in a figurative sense too. The nation in fact is the poster girl for gender parity. According to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2023 Global Gender Gap Report, Iceland is the country with the best gender pay equality, having closed 91.2% of its gender gap and ranked first for the 14th year in a row!
Impressive credentials there! While in relative terms, the ranking may not be wrong, the women in the country are far from satisfied. The urge to close the gap and attain total parity by 2030 is led by none other than Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, a woman herself.
Apparently, this can be an ‘Athena’s task’ (closest to Hercules in physical prowess and for want of a female equivalent!) even in Iceland, where they are within a whispering distance of one of the vaunted goals. Athletes vouch for the fact that the last lap is often the hardest part of a race!
Iceland however can take solace in UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ statement that at the current pace, gender equality was projected to be 300 years away! The goal of the dawn of the next decade set by Katrin for Iceland is infinitesimal in comparison. As one who practices what she preaches, the PM also went on strike on Tuesday – and didn’t attend office, with her female cabinet colleagues also following suit!
Well, this is the first time in half a century that Icelandic women went on a 24-hour strike after the famous testing of the waters on the same date in 1975. Compared to the then 25,000 assembled in the capital, the number this time swelled to 100,000 – more than a quarter of the island nation’s population.
The women included those who had paid and unpaid jobs, meaning homemakers doing domestic chores like cooking and looking after children. The men were indeed a harried lot! Sectors dominated by women workers suffered – schools, medical facilities, supermarkets.
Only one bank branch opened and TV newscasters were drab men in rare limelight. Children appeared to have gotten a peek at the workplace of the fathers and toddlers must have been pampered by over-indulgent papas with whatever they ask for to buy peace!
The angst of the dames can be understood from the fact that other than the relatively minor gap in parity, 40% have suffered some form of sexual or physical violence. That indeed is a large number that one would not expect in a small sparsely populated country that is the flag bearer of gender equality.
The protest strike in 1975 paved the way for some improvements. The very next year, a new law guaranteeing equal rights irrespective of gender was passed. The country got the world’s first elected female Head of State in 1980. Many a glass ceiling was broken – with women becoming bishops and wrestling association honchos. But the urge for perfection and betterment seems to have propelled the women once again to hit the path of agitation.
Earlier this month, in another Nordic nation, the announcement of the Nobel Prize for Economics was significant for women’s empowerment. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences declared Claudia Goldin of Harvard University as the winner for this year. Selecting Goldin had two shots in the arm of achieving gender parity though that, per se, was not the consideration in choosing her.
Firstly, she became the first solo woman winner of the Economics prize. The previous two female winners shared the award with someone else. More significantly or coincidentally, her subject of specialization has been gender parity in the labor market.
Goldin’s arena of research has been America predominantly and understandably. But the conclusions are relevant to most, if not all, nations. Perhaps we all knew where the fault lies – it’s at home! “We are never going to have gender equality, or narrow the pay gap until we have a couple’s equity,” she mentioned in an interview. In the past, the gap in educational qualifications might have been the stumbling block for women. However, the Nobel committee said Goldin has shown that the bulk of the current earnings gap is now between men and women in the same jobs — and that it mostly emerges after the birth of a woman’s first child.
Obviously, it’s not just charity that begins at home, the cornerstones of gender equality should also be laid on the domestic base. In this respect, she coined the term “greedy jobs” which are high-paying, high-pressure jobs that require people to prioritize work over all other aspects of their lives.
She points out that “greedy jobs” that come with a competitive salary leave people with a difficult choice – ultimately, one parent needs to be available at home, and this is still most often the woman. Increasing government funding of child care and the number of high-paying jobs in which people can share duties, rather than burn out, can help narrow the gender pay gap, says Goldin.
In a nutshell, for the above changes to happen a change in the men’s mindset will have to be the starting point. In a world with wide disparity in women’s empowerment – like the Taliban’s Afghanistan situation on one end and Icelandish ‘almost there’ status on the other extreme – women face a tough challenge. At the end of the day, women in how many countries can dream of walking away from work, including taken-for-granted domestic errands even for a day!
Women’s empowerment can only follow when men are enlightened! But for that, men should awaken to the arduous reality of a day in a woman’s life.
As a beginning, why not dial a man in Iceland as to how his day was on 24 October 2023? After all, there is nothing like hearing from a horse’s mouth, especially a hassled one!
