Kvennafrídagurinn

By Gunnar Birgisson

As part of honoring the 50th Anniversary of the women's strike in Iceland, guest writer Gunnar Birgisson describes his experience that day.

I was eleven years old during the historic women’s strike day on October 24, 1975. Of course, I did not understand its cause and significance at the time. But as with many other major strikes or protests that have occurred during my life, it at least caused me to start thinking about problems I was not aware of before.

When I first heard there was going to be a women’s strike, my first reaction was “why?”. No answers were forthcoming in my home, as we were not accustomed to discussing, let alone debating, such weighty issues. But gradually, I got the impression that women felt they were unappreciated and taken for granted both at home and in the workplace. I was surprised when I heard that women were systematically paid less than men and I didn’t fathom why this was the case, since it seemed without doubt to me that women worked just as hard, if not harder.

Photo Credit: Taylor, Bayard, Artist. Man working— Icelandic women working. (1862). [Photograph]. Retrieved from the Library of Congress: www.loc.gov/item/2004662114/ .

I don’t recall whether my mother joined the many other Icelandic women in the gathering downtown. She passed away a few years ago, and neither my father nor any of her few surviving friends could remember. But I think she went to work, driven by a personal sense of responsibility to continue teaching her elementary school students.

But I do recall that, around dinnertime, my mother was tense, perhaps regretting not joining in the strike. I believe that my father ended up making dinner, which was always a step down from my mother’s cuisine. When my mother broke her legs skiing the year before, we’d been subjected to my father’s cooking for a few weeks. We complained about the burnt pan-fried fish, hoping our mother would soon return to the kitchen. We appreciated her most when she was absent, it seems. In hindsight, it was perhaps another example of taking for granted the great work—both in quantity and quality—that a woman does for her family.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the strike was just one day. We—families and workplaces—wouldn’t have survived if it had lasted longer. But it was long enough to start a discussion and increase awareness within society. Within a few years, a woman was elected president, there was a Women’s Party that successfully fielded candidates in the parliamentary elections in 1983 and several subsequent elections, and by now, three women have served as prime minister of the country.

A strike, which stopped everything, in fact started so much.