Icelandic women strike over gender pay gap

REYKJAVIK - Icelandic women held a half-day strike at work and home on Monday over inequalities in pay, domestic violence and other areas of sexual discrimination, in a rerun of a protest by 25,000 women exactly 30 years ago.

Women were urged to leave their workplace and stop cooking and washing at home.

The action on the North Atlantic island of 250,000 people took place in a country where the level of sexual equality is already high, but organisers said progress was still needed.

"The goal of this year's Woman's Day is the same as it was 30 years ago, to show the value of the contribution of women to the Icelandic economy," Katrin Anna Gudmundsdottir, one of the organisers, told Reuters.

Timing the action to highlight the gap in pay between men and women, the strike began at 2:08pm (12.08am NZT Tuesday) with a demonstration in the centre of Reykjavik due later.

"Icelandic women earn 64.15 per cent of what men earn ... at 2:08 they will have worked 64.15 per cent of a normal nine-to-five working day," added Gudmundsdottir, a member of Iceland's Feminist Society.

Like other Nordic states, Iceland prides itself on promoting sexual equality. A generous welfare state funds kindergarten places so that women, who often end up being the ones who stay at home with the children, can return to work.

Kristin Asgeirsdottir, a former member of parliament for the Women's Party, said representation in politics and the workplace had risen over the last three decades.

Women hold 33 per cent of seats in parliament, versus five per cent in 1975, and 80 per cent of women are now in work, up from 50 per cent.

Iceland also had a woman president, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, between 1980 and 1996.

But while the situation of women has improved since the 1975 strike, which was to highlight World Women Day, the organisers say it is still not good enough. They cited low pay in female-dominated professions like nursing.

"We are well off in many ways, but we have far to go in others," Asgeirsdottir said.

- REUTERS