Icelandic Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir has said that she will join tens of thousands of women walking off the job on Tuesday to protest the widely disputed gender wage gap.
For the seventh time in the history of the country, female Icelanders will take part in the “Kvennafri,” translated into English as “Women’s Day Off”. The strike is intended to protest the supposed inequality faced by women in one of the most egalitarian societies in the world, as well as to protest against the supposed wage gap between men and women.
Joining the tens of thousands of women, Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir of the Left-Green Movement party said that she too would take the day off on Tuesday.
“I will not work this day, as I expect all the women [in cabinet] will do as well,” she is quoted as saying by the BBC.
The globalist World Economic Forum (WEF) has claimed that the gender wage gap is around 21 per cent in favour of men, while the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) claimed that it was around 10 per cent.
However, according to Statistics Iceland — an official government agency — when accounting for critical factors such as occupation, hours worked, and education level, the disparity shrinks to just over 4 per cent.
Women in Iceland are striking today, for the 7th time since the famous #womensdayoff in 1975. Their activism for equality has changed Icelandic society for the better and continues to do so today. #Kvennaverkfall pic.twitter.com/prCZrqP3EJ
— President of Iceland (@PresidentISL) October 24, 2023
This remaining difference could possibly be attributable to inherent differences between men and women, such as females being said tend to be more reluctant to ask for raises, a characteristic Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson has argued is likely a result of women being more agreeable than men on average.
It is also the case that the government of Iceland made it illegal for employers to pay men more than women for the same job in 1976, meaning that if any woman believed that she was being paid less for the same work as a male co-worker, she could take her employer to court.
Nevertheless, campaigners feel that there is more to be done to elevate the standing of women in Iceland, despite its ranking as the best country in the world for women, according to the WEF.
“We’re talked about, Iceland is talked about, like it’s an equality paradise,” strike organiser Freyja Steingrímsdóttir told the New York Times. “But an equality paradise should not have a 21 per cent wage gap and 40 per cent of women experiencing gender-based or sexual violence in their lifetime. That’s not what women around the world are striving for.”
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