It is important that Iceland maintains this approach in its effort to continue to lead as the most gender-neutral society. Going into the future, countries should implement comprehensive reforms to erase all forms of discrimination against men and women in the quest for gender equality. The next year, Iceland’s parliament passed a law guaranteeing equal rights to women and men. Although this 1976 law did little to change the disparity in wages and employment for women, it was a large political step towards true equality. The strikers had clearly achieved their goal and demonstrated the undeniable importance of women and their work in Iceland. The strike also paved the way for the election of Iceland’s, and the world’s, first democratically elected female president five years later.
History teaches us that progress doesn’t come about in a vacuum and that grassroots pressure plus investment in politics is a very powerful catalyst for change. Links to external Internet sites on Library of Congress Web pages do not constitute the Library’s endorsement of the content of their Web sites or of their policies or products.
- She became minister of social affairs in 1987, a position she held until 1994.
- Herring girls’ organizing efforts took place around the same time that women won suffrage in Iceland.
- It identifies differences between indirect and direct gender discrimination, acknowledges gaps in wages, and recognizes that gender-based violence is detrimental to society.
- In 1845 the vote was limited to men above a certain age who owned property and paid taxes.
It also has the world’s first female and openly gay head of government, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, who was elected prime minister in 2009. Today, observers often cite Iceland as a model of gender parity for other nations to follow. The historical arc of those achievements leads back to a period of rapid change in the country—to the salting stations of Siglufjörður and towns like it, and to the hard work of the herring girls. Herring towns grew rapidly as salting stations, processing plants and warehouses sprung up along the ever-expanding docks. Home to some 1,200 residents today, Siglufjörður reached a population of more than 3,000 by the 1940s.
In 2009, Iceland became the first country to completely close the gender gap in education and health. And in 2016, Iceland was 87% of the way to closing the gender gap in all sectors.
A Better World Is Possible: The 1975 Icelandic Women’s Strike
The age of settlement is considered to have iceland hot women ended in the year 930 with the establishment of Alþingi. Women in IcelandA procession in Bankastræti in Reykjavík on July 7th 1915 to celebrate women’s suffrage. The museum director adds, “They had to be ready to start working whenever the ships arrived.
Icelandic CrossFit Women – Björk Odinsdóttir
Following this achievement, on June http://paraguaydebate.dev.nosotroshq.com/?p=2447 15, 1915, women older than 40 gained the right to vote in national elections. Before this, men could vote from 25 years of age and women only at 40 years old. In 1920, Iceland removed “the age barrier to voting eligibility for women” completely.
The official law, created in 2000, is known as the Icelandic Act on Maternity/Paternity and Parental Leave. The law itself was amended in 2006 increasing parental leave from six to nine months. The government covers parental leave for birth, adoption, and foster care for all employees in Iceland, even those who are self-employed paying 80% of earned salary to new parents. Parents split the time of leave equally to ensure children grow up with equal care from both parents, and workplaces are balanced. Within the law there are nine defined areas of gender discrimination. It identifies differences between indirect and direct gender discrimination, acknowledges gaps in wages, and recognizes that gender-based violence is detrimental to society. Here are seven laws and standard practices that support women’s rights, and penalize gender discrimination.
This blog is governed by the general rules of respectful civil discourse. The content of all comments is released into the public domain unless clearly stated otherwise. Nevertheless, the Library of Congress may monitor any user-generated content as it chooses and reserves the right to remove content for any reason whatever, without consent. Gratuitous links to sites are viewed as spam and may result in removed comments. We further reserve the right, in our sole discretion, to remove a user’s privilege to post content on the Library site. Today, March 8, marks International Women’s Day, a day recognized by the United Nations and celebrated around the world. During the Viking Age, Norse women worked in farming and commerce alongside men, and were often left in charge while their husbands were away or had been killed.
Then, in 1907, the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association began as the first formal women’s organization to focus on political gender equality and “equal access to education” and the workplace. In 1908, Iceland elected four females to serve on the city council in Reykjavik. As of 2018, 88% of working-age women were employed, 65% of students attending university were female, and 41% of members of parliament were women. Nevertheless, women still https://nowroar.co.uk/dating/630-bulgarian-woman-ideas-bulgarian-women-bulgarian-traditional-outfits/ earn about 14% less than men, though these statistics do not take into account the hours worked, over-time, and choices of employment. Iceland has the world’s highest proportion of women in the labour market, http://soline17.naravoslovje.net/2023/01/21/an-introduction-to-traditional-chinese-culture-shen-yun-learn-resource/ significant child care allocations for working women. It has gender neutral parental leave, with a quota for each parent, and a transferable part.
During her time as president she used her position to focus on youth and to support forestry, while promoting Icelandic language and culture. After her retirement as president in 1996, Vigdis went on to become “founding chair of the Council of Women World Leaders at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University”. Two years later, in 1998, she was appointed president of the Unesco World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. In the wake of the 2008–2011 Icelandic financial crisis, there was a swing towards female leadership.
An outpouring of women on to the streets was, by then, a well-trodden form of activism. In 1970, tens of thousands of women had protested on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. In the UK, that same year, 20,000 women marched in Leeds against discriminatory wages. But what made Iceland’s day of protest on 24 October 1975 so effective was the number of women who participated. Teachers, nurses, office workers, housewives put down tools and didn’t go to work, provide childcare or even cook in their kitchens. Iceland is arguably one of the world’s most gender-equal countries. It is listed as number one in the 2016 best places to work by The Economist’s women index.
