Was a Friday and 90% of Iceland's women went on strike that day.
They were fed up of earning less than the average men and they organized a strike that, later, officially, was called a "day off".
Women left home early in the morning and went back late in the evening. They spent that day gathering, smoking more than in a normal day, drinking coffee and going down to the capital city Reykjavik for the bigest demo the country has ever seen: 25,000 marchers out of a population of 220,000.
It was a spur to action and many feel that the solidarity women showed that day paved the way for the election five years later of Vigdis Finnbogadottir, the world's first democratically elected female president.
But 30 years later there is also a feeling of disillusionment.
A statistic shows that Icelandic women earn on average only 64.15% of men's wages.
So next Monday, on the rally's 30th anniversary, women are being encouraged to leave work at 2.08pm, the time by which they would have earned their pay if they were earning the same as men.
1 comment:
Good for them! I'd be right behind them if I were there too. Let's hope it wakes up the Icelandic government and prompts them to do something about it.
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