Lably
Skip to content

Women in Iceland

  • 13 min read
  • 5 chapters

Related on Lably

Through Iceland, Feminism and Typesetting

LabPw Sunshine IslandLab · Class 6–11The Restless EarthLab · Class 10–12Evolution & Natural Selection

Iceland is arguably one of the world's most feminist countries, having been awarded this status in 2011 for the second year in a row. Iceland was the first country to have a female president, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, elected in 1980. It also has the world's first female and openly gay head of government, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, who was elected prime minister in 2009.

Iceland enjoys the smallest overall gender gap, according to the World Economic Forum ranking Global Gender Gap Report, a position it has held since 2009. In 2020 Iceland had a 12.2% gap, as measured across four categories: health, education, economic participation and opportunity, and political advancement. The pay gap between women and men is decreasing at a rate which would lead to parity in 2068. Women earn about 72% of men's salaries on average, and are still subject to domestic and sexual violence. Women in Iceland do not necessarily fare better than other countries in professional fields: for example Iceland's percentage of female medical doctors is one of the lowest within the OECD (only Japan, Korea, Luxembourg and the US have less female doctors).

History

Viking age (793–1066)

Age of settlement (c. 870–930)

Both Norse men and Norse women colonised England, the Shetland and Orkney Islands, and Iceland during Viking Age migrations from Scandinavia. Norse women journeyed with men as explorers, and later as settlers in the Settlement of Iceland. A large number of women were abducted from Ireland and Great Britain as slaves - more than 60% of modern Icelandic women show Celtic DNA from these slave ancestors. The settler Aud the Deep-Minded was one of the earliest known Icelandic women. She was one of the four main settlers in early Icelandic history. Other notable early Icelanders include the explorer Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the poet Steinunn Refsdóttir, and Thorgerd Egilsdottir wife of Olaf the Peacock. The age of settlement is considered to have ended in the year 930 with the establishment of Alþingi.

Early Commonwealth Era

During the Viking Age, Norse women worked in farming and commerce alongside men, and were often left in charge while their husbands were away or had been killed. Women's workshops for making woolen textiles have been found in Iceland. Textiles were used as a form of currency in medieval Iceland, and there were regulations as to what was legal tender in the oldest (11th-century) part of the Grágás laws. Iceland exported shaggy cloaks to Europe.

Viking Age society was male-dominated, with defined gender roles. The dead were buried with some of their possessions: men were buried with tools and weapons, women with needlework, jewelry, rings of keys, and household items, although beads have been found in both male and female burials. Graves of this time have been observed to show older women being highly respected, which was shown by their grave including high value items. Foreigners that interacted with Viking women often later wrote about their "independent behaviors." Viking Age women could own their own property, ask for a divorce and were entitled to reclaim their dowries. If a woman's husband died, she would take his place on a permanent basis; in this way, women were often running farms or trading businesses. Many Scandinavian cultures of the time practiced polygamy as well as concubine outside of marriage. The Icelandic Sagas make reference to women acting as nurses and midwives, and attending to the wounds of men injured in battle. Despite the image of female Viking warriors often pushed by stories and media, we can see from artifacts that it was quite typical for Viking women to take care of all the house duties while the men took care of all matters outside the house, similar to many other male- dominated European cultures.

Women's suffrage

Icelandic women first got the right to vote in parliamentary elections in 1915.

In 1845 the vote was limited to men above a certain age who owned property and paid taxes. These restrictions were lifted over time, and in 1903 all men could vote except farm labourers. In 1907 the right to vote in municipal elections was extended to all women, having been granted to widows and single women of independent means in 1882.

A women's movement organized in the Thorvaldsensfélagið in 1875 and Hið íslenska kvenfélag in 1894, the first women's magazine Framsókn is founded by Ingibjörg Skaptadóttir and Sigríður Þorsteinsdóttir in 1895, and a women's suffrage organisation, the Icelandic Women's Rights Association, was founded by Bríet Bjarnhéðinsdóttir in 1907.

A bill for women's suffrage was agreed on by the Althing in 1911, ratified by the Althing in 1913, and enacted on 19 June 1915 by the Danish king but only granted the vote to women over 40, and did not grant the right to vote to servants. At the time this was around 12,000 Icelandic women. In 1920 these restrictions were lifted after Iceland became an independent state under the Danish crown in 1918.

1975 women's strike

It is said that in 1975, women in the workplace made 60% less than their male counterparts. Many were unable to work as they had to stay at home to do the housework and raise the children. On Friday, October 24, women left their formal and informal work at 14:05 (2:05 pm), the time at which they would have earned their day's wage had they been paid at the same average rate as men. The scale of the event was very large, involving 25,000 women in a country with just 220,000 inhabitants. In Reykjavík, almost 90% of the women participated.

The first strike in 1975 affected many things. Many schoolteachers were women, so schools closed or nearly so. The walkout disrupted the telephone service, and halted the printing of newspapers, as the typesetters were all women. Daycares were mostly closed, because the daycare workers were women, so men had to take their children to work. Easy-to-cook meals ran out in many stores, as did sweets and items to distract children. The strike continued until midnight, when women returned to work. The typesetters returned to set newspapers which were almost entirely devoted to the women's strike.

Women achieved their intended goal, basically shutting down Iceland for the day. Men referred to this day as "the Long Friday". Vigdís says she would not have become president without the strike which she said was the "first step for women's emancipation in Iceland", which "completely paralysed the country and opened the eyes of many men". In the year following the strike, Iceland set up the Gender Equality Council, and passed the Gender Equality Act, which prohibited gender discrimination in the workplace and in schools.

21st century

The strike was repeated; in 1975, 2005, 2010, and 2016 women in Iceland walked out in accordance to the time of day that they would stop being paid if their wage was the same as men. On October 24, 2016, women left work at 2:38 pm, for the 41st anniversary of the original women's day off. This indicated that women have gained only a half an hour more in pay in 11 years, that is slightly less than three minutes per year. The International Women's Strike, a global version inspired by the Icelandic strike, spread in 2017 and 2018.

Sign in to keep reading

4 more chapters are free with a Lably account.

More in Scientists, inventors, and mathematicians

National Academy of SciencesScience branch of the US National AcademiesBill ClintonPresident of the United States from 1993 to 2001American Philosophical SocietyAmerican scholarly organization and learned societyBirth nameA birth name is the name of a person given when they are born. The term may be applied to National Institutes of HealthUS government medical research agencyGermansPeople of Germany