Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdottir will join thousands of other women on Tuesday to strike against gender pay gap and gender-based violence.
This will be the seventh time that women in Iceland will strike in the name of gender equality, CNN quoted campaign organisers as saying on their official website.
The first strike took place on October 24, 1975. âOn October 24, all women in Iceland, including immigrant women, are encouraged to stop work, both paid and unpaid. For the whole day, women (and non-binary people) will strike, to demonstrate the importance of their contribution to society,â the organisers said. The strike, which is known as the âWomenâs Day Offâ or âKvennafrĂâ in Icelandic, hopes to raise awareness about the âsystemicâ wage discrimination and gender-based violence faced by women in Iceland.
Prime Minister Jakobsdottir told local news Iceland Monitor that she will not work on the strike day and expects other female members of government to do the same âin solidarity with Icelandic womenâ. âAs you know, 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. We are still tackling gender-based violence, which has been a priority for my government to tackle,â CNN quoted Jakobsdottir as saying.