Monday was the 30th anniversary of a major protest here in Iceland. That is, in 1975 women from all over Iceland marched downtown in Reykjavik to demand equal rights. One of those rights was equal pay for equal work and another was the right to work the same jobs as men. These are two things that seem to be a problem for men everywhere to agree to. In this country, 30 years later, there is still a 35% difference in pay between men and women. Women are still a minorty by far in politics and of the biggest 100 companies in the country only one has a women as CEO. So, on Monday, women here worked 65% of the day (the part of the day they are paid for) and then marched downtown. Somewhere around 50,000 people turned up at the rally, most of them could not get close enough to see the stage or hear the speakers who lectured the crowd. For a country of roughly 270,000 people, a gathering of 50,000 is absolutely amazing. It was fantastic to see on the news (I would have been there to march, but came home to get The Boy at playschool instead so The Wife wouldn't have to babysit). While the amount of positive energy was great and the turn-out may actually bring about a change, one thing stuck in my craw. Several companies and businesses closed to (as they put it) show support for their female employees. But in my opinion, that really undermines what the women were doing. By closing, the men got the day off with pay as well. Part of the point of the walk-out was to make the importance of women in thework place felt. People at school told me that, for instance, all the banks HAD to close because all of the tellers and customer service people are women and therefore, closing was the only option. But I think it would have shown more support of the women to stay open and inconvenience everyone looking for services and working in the banks because of the absence of the women. I cannot believe that in this day and age, greedy men are still ruling over everything in such a way as this. From my experience, even if I try to generalise, I cannot find any reason not to pay women as much as men. In fact, with few exceptions, the women that I know work harder and do a better job than the men I know at most jobs. I have never seen a woman doing construction work or other jobs that require great strength so I have no basis for comparisson there. However, if I think about school work there is only one woman that I know who does not work as hard or harder than the majority of the men at the school. More than 55% of the students at the University of Iceland are women. I find them far easier to work with and more organised than all but a few of the men I have worked with on group projects.
I just feel a bit ashamed of my fellow men when I hear that these people who are at least equal to us in every way are treated as second class citizens. I just do not get it. If I ever stand in the position of employer, pay will be determined solely by merit and not by anything else.