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Icelandic women’s boots are made for walking…off the job. And that’s just what they did last week when women went on strike to demand pay equality and safety from violence.
Where in the world? Iceland has been relatively successful with beating the gender pay gap, and has the highest gender parity score in the world, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). The island nation ranks first thanks to factors including education, political empowerment, and economic opportunity.
But on Oct. 24, thousands of women and nonbinary Icelanders went on strike for a day (known as “Kvennafrí,” or “Women’s Day Off”) to protest continued unequal pay and gender-based violence, the AP reported. Even Iceland’s prime minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir walked off the job.
In 1975, Icelandic women went on strike to demand equality, which led to progress including the first elected female president of the country. Almost 50 years later, union leaders, government officials, and leaders from the original strike said the country hasn’t achieved total equality, the Guardian reported.
Even though employers are required by law to prove that women are paid the same rates as men, the country still has a 10.2% pay gap, according to the OECD, though the WEF reports a bigger gap of 21%. There are more women in lower-paid and undervalued jobs, like teaching, cleaning, and healthcare, which exacerbates the problem.
“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,” Jakobsdóttir told Icelandic news outlet the Iceland Monitor.
Some businesses and services across the country, including schools, hospitals, and museums, were impacted by the strike.
Satellite view. The US ranked 43rd on the WEF list this year, with an income parity score of 75%. The lack of equality means women in the US are losing out on over $1.6 trillion a year, according to a September report from the National Partnership for Women & Families.
Claudia Goldin, a 2023 Nobel Prize winner for her work on the gender pay gap, told CNBC that pay equity is still out of reach, in part because women’s at-home duties aren’t diminishing as they take on demanding jobs that don’t provide enough flexibility. “How can we make these ‘greedy jobs’ less demanding, without making them less productive? That’s the next frontier we’ll need to explore,” Goldin said.