50 years ago, the women of Iceland took a day off—and inspired the world
Iceland is widely recognized as the world’s most equitable society for women—in large part thanks to the women’s strike that transformed the country 50 years ago.
The morning of October 24, 1975, started out differently than usual for 90 percent of women in Iceland. For once, they didn’t have the usual rush to make breakfast or get the children ready for school. The 60 percent of women who worked outside the home would not be going to their jobs either. They were going out—and leaving the men in their lives to fend for themselves.
The women of Iceland took to the streets that day 50 years ago to protest unfair employment practices, the wage gap, and the general devaluing of domestic labor. Without them, everyday life ground to a halt. Nurseries and schools shut down without their female workforces, as did big shops, theaters, and fishing factories. Men were forced to bring their children to the office and, later that day, easy-to-cook sausages sold out at stores with men in charge of dinner.
Many men deemed it the "Long Friday"—but this day has since gone down in history as the Icelandic Women’s Strike, widely thought to be a catalyst for Iceland’s current status as the world’s most equitable society for women, as named by the World Economic Forum for 16 years in a row. This year also marks an unprecedented milestone—nearly all of Iceland’s top positions, including the prime minister, president, the chief of police, and heads of all public and private universities, have been filled by women.
“I think this event was the turning point for a change in Iceland towards a more equal society,” says Hrafnhildur Gunnarsdóttir, producer of The Day Iceland Stood Still, a 2024 documentary about the strike.
The 1975 strike has also served as inspiration for women’s movements around the world, including a 2016 strike in Poland and the 2018 International Women’s Day strike in Spain.
Pamela Hogan, director of The Day Iceland Stood Still, has seen how inspired people get when they learn about the strike. “Young women in South Korea were literally taking notes as they watched the film,” says Hogan.
The origins of the Icelandic women's strike
Women first gained the right to vote in Iceland in 1915, and even elected the first woman to parliament in 1922. But the country made little progress in advancing women’s rights in the subsequent decades. By 1975, women were fed up with earning so much less than men, facing gender discrimination in the workplace, and their meager 5 percent representation in parliament.
The idea for a strike came up during a June 1975 women's congress in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavík, where women’s groups had convened to plan for the United Nations-sponsored International Women's Year. The Red Stockings, a feminist women’s group that had been championing a women’s strike since they first formed in 1970, put forth the proposal.
(A century after women’s suffrage, the fight for equality isn’t over.)
“Women didn't see themselves as workers; they thought of themselves as housewives, and whenever work was scarce, they were sent home without pay or complaint. We wanted to show how important women's contribution was to society,” Guðrún Hallgrímsdóttir, a former member of parliament and an original member of the Red Stockings, tells National Geographic.
But strikes outside of trade unions and employers associations were illegal, so some groups at the conference were hesitant—until Valborg Bentsdóttir, a member of the centrist Women’s Rights Society, spoke up. As Vox reported in 2023, Valborg said, “Strike? Is that what you don't like? Why don't you then call it just a day off?”
Thus, it officially became known as the more innocuous sounding, Kvennafrídagurinn, or Women’s Day Off.
“And that’s when the ball started rolling,” says Hallgrímsdóttir. “Women’s organizations all over the country mobilized their members to take part, and participation became truly nationwide.”
Women of all ages, backgrounds, and political parties worked together to get the word out to as many women as possible. They mailed postcards and letters, handed out brochures and flyers, went door to door, made phone calls, sold Women's Day Off posters and stick-on labels, and announced the event in newspapers and on the radio and TV. The strike also garnered a lot of media interest in the lead up to the event when organizers announced that their polls indicated that between 80 and 100 percent of all women in Iceland were expected to participate.
“The reason it succeeded so well was that women felt personally connected to the event,” says Hallgrímsdóttir. “It was their action.”
The day of the strike
The morning of the strike, the front page of every newspaper in Iceland was filled with news of the Women’s Day Off. At the time, María Sigurðardóttir was a typesetter for the conservative morning newspaper, Morgunblaðið. The newspaper promised to put the strike on the front page if the striking typesetters came in early to get the newspaper out. “So we came to work after midnight to finish the paper,” says Sigurðardóttir.
(A legal loophole allowed New Jersey women to vote a century before suffrage.)
Over 20 rallies had been organized throughout the country, with the biggest taking place in Lækjartorg, the main square in downtown Reykjavík. The weather was unusually mild and sunny for October in Iceland, matching the buoyant mood of the crowd. Twenty-five thousand women attended, many carrying posters that read, "Equality at Once" and "A Day Off—and Then?" Female members of parliament, Svava Jakobsdóttir and Sigurlaug Bjarnadóttir, spoke to the crowd, encouraging them to go into politics. A vinyl album with feminist songs sung by the Redstockings was even made, titled, Áfram Stelpur (Í augsýn er nú frelsi),” or “Onward Girls (Freedom is within reach).” After the rallies, the conversation continued at open houses.
Sigurðardóttir describes the day as magical. “The feeling of being surrounded by so many women with the same goal was like nothing else! I have never felt like this again in my life,” she says.
The legacy of the Icelandic women's strike
Hallgrímsdóttir felt like she was on cloud nine the day of the strike. As she recalls, “we were convinced that everything had changed.” However, that wasn’t exactly the case. “The real achievements only became apparent later,” she says.
Valgerður Pálmadóttir, a researcher at the University of Iceland who studies social movements and historical change, notes that social and political changes take time. “One-day women’s strikes need to be followed by continued political organization and struggle,” she adds.
Improvements came incrementally. One year after the strike, Iceland passed an equal rights law and five years later, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir became the first woman in the world to be democratically elected president of her country. The Women’s Alliance, an all-women political party created in the early 1980s, focused on getting more women elected, and over time, the percentage of women in parliament has risen from 5 percent in 1983 to the current 46 percent.
Iceland also passed a variety of women’s rights-related policies over the subsequent years, including universal childcare and a law that made paternity leave more accessible for fathers. In 2018, Iceland became the first country in the world to legally enforce equal pay for women and men for companies or organizations with 25 or more employees.
Still, there’s always more work to be done. No country has reached gender parity yet, including Iceland, which ranks top in the world having closed 92.6 percent of the gender gap. And that’s not the only issue.
“Gender-based violence is a huge problem and recent studies show that women still perform the lion's share of housework and the mental load within family life. We are also witnessing a backlash against LGBTQ+ rights,” says Pálmadóttir.
For this reason, Iceland will be hosting another women’s strike on the 50th anniversary of Women's Day Off. “We are going to change society together,” said this year’s strike organizers in a statement. “For us, for women and queer people, for the future. Nothing can stop us.”
