Jackie Kennedy

Today is Kvennafrídagurinn and the Women of The Day are the 25,000 women who gathered for a rally in the centre of Reykjavik OTD in 1975 in support of a national strike to protest at sex inequality. Kvennafrídagurinn or Women's Day Off, led by women’s organisations, meant that they did not go to their paid jobs and did not do any housework or child-rearing for the whole day. Ninety percent of women took part, including women in rural communities. The fish processing industry was one of those that ground to a halt because it was heavily dependent on female labour. The women listened to speeches, sang, and held discussions about what should be done about sex equality in Iceland. For context, Iceland than had a total population of 220,000 people so the rally had attracted about 25% of the country’s women. The last speech of the day was by Aðalheiður Bjarnfreðsdóttir, who "represented Sókn, the trade union for the lowest paid women in Iceland". Fathers had to step up and take their children to work instead. Employers laid in stocks of sweets, colouring pencils and drawing paper to keep the children occupied while their fathers worked. Bearing in mind that this was 1975, isn’t it funny how accommodations can suddenly be made when men are suddenly made responsible for the care of their own children? The Althing, the Icelandic parliament, took heed and passed a law guaranteeing equal pay the following year. Kvennafrídagurinn was also credited for paving the way for the election of Vigdis Finnbogadóttir in 1980, the first democratically elected woman president in the world. Every ten years on the anniversary of Kvennafrídagurinn, women stop work early to go on partial strike, staying for one extra minute each time to mark the progress made, but in 2010, they increased the frequency of the partial strike to every year. Three years ago - 24 October 2023 - the second all-day women’s strike in 49 years took place to highlight the pay gap between the sexes and male violence against women and girls. Around 100,000 people took part. The mass protest that followed in Reykjavik was attended by the prime minister at the time, Katrín Jakobsdottír, who was determined to achieve full equality in Iceland by 2030. Over to you, Andy Burnham — once you’ve finally worked out that no woman is bepenised, of course. You can start by telling your Cabinet today to stop prevaricating and instruct the Civil Service to start implementing the Supreme Court ruling in its entirety. Today. Don’t you think enough time and money has been wasted tiptoeing around the hurty feelings of men in dresses?