My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcottin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. It is Wednesday, the twenty fifth of October. I'm Billy fitz Simons.
I'm Emma Gillespie.
Today, tens of thousands of women and non binary people in Iceland are on strike, calling for the gender pay gap to close and an end to gender based violence.
Iceland's Prime Minister and other ministers in Iceland's parliament are among those who've stopped work for a full day now. Despite Iceland's standing in the global community as being a leader in gender equity, the women who live there say there's plenty of work still to be done.
Well, Unparck the strike, what happened and everything you need to know about Iceland's gender equity movement in the day dive. But first, Emma, what's making headlines.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi will be honored with an official state dinner at the White House on Thursday morning, Australian time, as part of his diplomatic visit to Washington. Albanzi will become the third Australian Prime Minister to receive a state dinner in the US over the last twenty years, after
John Howard and Scott Morrison. The PM arrived in the US Capitol on Sunday night for four days of meetings, where he had said the focus would be on the orcust defense packed and climate action.
The Federal government will find a three year trial aimed at reducing the impacts of harmful social media messaging on young men. It hopes to combat arise in gender stereotyping spurred on by influential personalities like Andrew Tate. The trial will focus on boys as young as five and seek to encourage healthy relationships among men with their female counterparts, as part of an ongoing push to end violence against women and children.
A collision involving two trains in Easton, Bangladesh, has killed seventeen people. A freight train was believed to have collided into a passenger train crushing two carriages. Several other passengers were injured.
And today's good news the Matildas are back on Australian soil for the first time since the World Cup. They will play three Olympic qualifying matches in Perth, with their first against Iran on Thursday night.
Tilli Time, Billy, I want to take you to Iceland today, where women and non binary people started their work stoppage yesterday in the name of gender equality. Forty eight years after the first all day national women's strike. Protesters are demanding that gender based violence be eliminated and that the contribution of women and non binary people be acknowledged and rewarded in Iceland.
I'm excited to talk about this topic because when it was pitched in yesterday's pitch meeting, it was so interesting that the Prime Minister was part of this strike. But before we get into it, Iceland doesn't get a whole lot of time on this podcast. I can't remember the last time Simon Zara spoke about it in one of their deep dives. So Emma, before we look at the strike, can you just give us a quick reminder of anything we need to know about Iceland?
Okay, yep, so rapid fire lesson on Iceland. It's a European island in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, just south of the Arctic Circle. What I mean by that is it's cold. It's a land of extremes really so think you know, twenty four hours of sunshine in the peak of summer and really long stretches of dark winters. It's a pretty small country. We're talking about a population
of less than four hundred thousand people. Its parliament is forty eight percent women, and the Prime minister, another woman, is from the left green movement.
I feel like the thing that I do know about Iceland is that it's quite progressive, which those stats seem to match with. Have any strikes like this happened before?
So this strike is called the National Women's Strike, and they've been happening since nineteen seventy five. That was the first national women's strike, when ninety percent of female Icelandic workers stopped work for gender equality, and the action became known as the Women's Day Off. That strike actually led to an equal pay law being passed in Iceland's parliament,
so it's standing in the countries is quite respected. Twenty five thousand women protested against income inequality in the eighties, and then more recently there have been protests in the form of women leaving work the minute they stopped getting paid. So this was based off the gender pay gap and to highlight that difference. So in two thousand and five, women walked off the job at two eight pm, and that's happened every few years since as the gap has narrowed.
So the last one was in twenty eighteen. The gender pay gup adjusted for working hours was sixteen percent in Iceland, but the gender income gap is much higher. Women left work in that protest at two point fifty five pm that year.
So those timings of walking off the job at two eight pm and then later walking off at two fifty five is that based on business hours?
Yep, that's a really good question. So this protest was based on the idea that men and women working nine to five or like a kind of standard eight hour day, that women only get paid until two fifty five pm. So for this protest to prove that point, that was you know, when they finished their.
Day, okay, And so then from what you have said about this week's action, it's more of a twenty four hour strike. So how did women in Iceland participate in this week's action? You know, what did the strike actually involve?
Yep, So, as you mentioned, this was a twenty four hour strike and women in Iceland haven't taken action of that extent in decades. So midnight to midnight, and it was planned by about forty organizations in Iceland who came together, including one of the country's biggest worker unions, and it was all about women refusing labor of any kind for
the day, both paid and unpaid. Organizers said that the timing of it boiled down to systemic wage discrimination that they say still affects women in Iceland and gender based violence, which it described as a pandemic that must be eradicated. Organizers said, we cannot wait any longer for actions, and that's how this year's strike came about.
You said something just that that's interesting. You said that there was a ban unpaid and unpaid work. I know, something that often comes up in these discussions is the idea of the household mental load and how that disproportionately impacts women. So women doing more of the cleaning in the house, doing much more of looking after kids, for example, what do we know about the element of those protests. I don't think I've heard about a strike in that area before.
Yeah, so this is a really interesting part of the organized action. People participating were told not to go to work, so their jobs, but they were also told to refuse unpaid work, like you say, to avoid taking on expected unpaid labor such as childcare, housework, the emotional labor of delegating tasks, and strike organizers said for this one day, we expect husbands, fathers, brothers, and uncles to take on the responsibilities related to family and home, for example, preparing
breakfast and lunchboxes, remembering birthdays of relatives, buying a present for your mother in law, making a dentist appointment for your kid, etc.
I'm sure there are a lot of people who are listening who think that sounds pretty nice. What do we know about the scale of this strike, how many people are expected to take part.
So Apart from the labor stoppages, women and non binary people in Iceland also gathered all around the country to demonstrate at rallies a few hours ago. The biggest gathering was organized in the capital of Rekuvic, but in terms of how widespread the participation was you kind of only have to look at Iceland's government. This is a near majority female parliament. They have a female Prime Minister, Katrine yak Abstrata, and the PM said she'd be doing the strike.
She said she expected many of her colleagues to do the same. So when you've got, you know, one of the most prominent people in the country telling you that she endorses these protests, you've got to think that's a good enough excuse for many women to join in themselves.
As I said earlier when we were talking about a really brief overview of Iceland, I had this perception, and I feel like a lot of Australians would have this perception that Iceland is quite a progressive place when it comes to gender equality. I mean, you said before in your overview that forty eight percent of its parliament is women. So is that not the case that it is quite progressive when it comes to gender equality.
Yeah, I mean absolutely. It does certainly have that global reputation, and that doesn't come from nothing. It's long been seen as this country leading the charge when it comes to equality, and that's reflected you know, the World Economic Forums Global Gender Gap Index ranked Iceland as the best country in the world for gender equality this year. That was for the fourteenth time. But what has become clearer from these strikes is that nomic disparities do still remain between men
and women in Iceland. You know, even the best place for gender equity in the world still isn't one hundred percent equal. In twenty eighteen, Iceland introduced laws requiring businesses to prove that they were paying men and women equally, so that has helped with understanding the scope of the issue.
But the PM said Iceland hasn't reached its goals for full gender equality, and she said we are still tackling the gender based wage gap, which is unacceptable in twenty twenty three, so what do we know about the wage gap in Iceland? Then, interestingly, as you kind of pointed out, one of the strike organizers and union leaders actually told The Guardian that Iceland is talked about like it's an
equality paradise. But she said an equality paradise should not have a twenty one percent wage gap and forty percent of women experiencing gender based or sexual violence in their lifetime. Iceland's ranking as this global leader in gender equity, you know, it's based on a combination of factors, so not just the pay gap, not just wage equality, but also workforce participation,
education rates, representation in parliament. It's number one on all of those things, but that doesn't mean it's ranked highest in every category. So, for example, it's fifth in the world for wage equality for similar work.
Just quickly, you're talking about this has made me interested. Do you know where Australia ranks?
Okay, I looked this up because I had a feeling. I'm often great minds. I'm often prepping thinking what would Billy do? What would Billy say? And I wondered if you would so, Billy, I'm happy or not that happy to tell you we're a little bit further back on that one at fifty third. Wow. But even though Iceland is leading the pack on so many of these issues, it did actually slip in a couple of categories in the Global Gender Gap Report. Its rankings dropped in indexes
of economic participation and opportunity and educational attainment. So that's how many women are going to school, what's their highest education level. They all slipped between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three.
Just going back to the strike this week? What did men do whilst women were on strike?
So the National Women's Strike explicitly stated that men should not strike with them on the twenty fourth of October. What they did say is that men should show their support by taking on additional responsibilities, so including in the home like childcare, and by picking up the slack at work too to help their female and non binary colleagues to be able to take the time to participate in
the strike. A lot of media and Iceland wrote that they were expecting schools to close on Tuesday, or at least some schools to close or be operating at reduced capacity or shortened hours. Strike organizers said that since a majority of the workers in those fields would be on strike, fathers would therefore have to make arrangements for the day.
So to end, what are the next steps for the women's movement in Iceland?
Government has launched this investigation in Iceland into how female dominated professions are valued in comparison to fields traditionally dominated by men. So, for example, there are sectors of education and health in Iceland that are ninety percent dominated by women who were paid less than men. Strike organizers were also seeking higher wages for Iceland's population of immigrant women. They make up around twenty two percent of the country's
labor markets. So we'll wait and see if there's any movement there. And there will also be a presidential election in Iceland next year, so we know. Iceland's representation of women in parliament is among the highest in the world. The Prime Minister is its head of government. She is a woman, but its head of state is a president and right now that's Gundi Johanneson. He was incredibly popular
at the last election. But it'll be interesting to see if any progress on these issues shifts anything in Iceland's political landscape.
Interesting topic. It's not often you hear about the prime minister of a country participating in a strike. So Emma, thank you so much, thank you for having me, and thank you so much for listening to The Daily Yours. If you want to help the Daily Ods grow and get the word out there, if you could leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, it would really help our small team grow. Thank you so much and we will be back tomorrow.