On the 24th of october in 1975, approximately 90% of Icelandic women struck for equality, not attending jobs or doing any domestic work. Iceland passed an equal pay law the following year, but the strike has been repeated on its anniversary several times since, such as in the years 2005, 2010, and 2016.

The strike was planned by "The Women's Congress", which had met on June 20th and 21st earlier that year. Among the reasons given for going on strike were pay inequality, lack of women in union leadership, and a general lack of recognition for the value and skill of domestic labor.

During the work stoppage, also known as "Women's Day Off", 25,000 people gathered in Reykjavik, Iceland's capital city, for a rally. There, women listened to speakers, sang, and talked to each other about what could be done to achieve gender equality in Iceland.

Women from many different backgrounds spoke, including a housewife, two members of parliament, and a worker. The last speech of the day was by Aðalheiður Bjarnfreðsdóttir, who "represented Sókn, the trade union for the lowest paid women in Iceland", according to The Guardian.

In 1976, the Icelandic government passed an equal pay law, and the country elected its first female President, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, five years later in 1980.

The 1975 Women's Strike also helped inspire the 2016 "Black Monday" anti-abortion ban protests in Poland, as well as the "International Women's Strike", single day work stoppages on March 8th, 2017 and 2018.

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  • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Saw a take about how much carbon was generated to discover the newest largest prime/mersenne prime. I never considered "X scientific endeavour is a waste of resources" to be very serious, but it's extra funny when we're wasting so many resources on automating "as per my last email".

    • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      3 months ago

      Even like conveniences that improve people's daily lives in recent years are so far into diminishing returns territory that like who cares. Let the nerds have a neat fact, tap to pay is creating way more carbon.

      • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
        ·
        3 months ago

        The marginal return from swipe to use your credit card to tap to use your credit card is so small that you can't convince me it brings more value to humanity than knowing the specific value of a larger prime or even a proving a theorem only 4 people in the world know about.

        • buckykat [none/use name]
          ·
          3 months ago

          The point of tap to pay is so you can do nfc payments from a phone.

          Of course, more civilized countries just use qr codes.