Women across Iceland, including the prime minister, go on strike for equal pay and no more violence

abcnews.go.com:

Women across Iceland, including the prime minister, went on strike Tuesday to push for an end to unequal pay and gender-based violence

HUSAVIK, Iceland — Schools, shops, banks and Iceland's famous swimming pools shut on Tuesday as women in the volcanic island nation — including the prime minister — went on strike to push for an end to unequal pay and gender-based violence.

Icelanders awoke to all-male news teams announcing shutdowns across the country, with public transport delayed, hospitals understaffed and hotel rooms uncleaned. Trade unions, the strike's main organizers, called on women and nonbinary people to refuse paid and unpaid work, including chores. About 90% of the country's workers belong to a union.

Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdóttir said she would stay home as part of the strike — “kvennaverkfall” in Icelandic — and expected other women in her Cabinet would do the same.

Iceland, a rugged island of around 380,000 people just below the Arctic Circle, has been ranked as the world’s most gender-equal country 14 years in a row by the World Economic Forum, which measures pay, education, health care and other factors.

No country has achieved full equality, and there remains a gender pay gap in Iceland.

Tuesday’s walkout, running from midnight to midnight, was billed as the biggest since Iceland’s first such event on Oct. 24, 1975, when 90% of women refused to work, clean or look after children, to voice anger at discrimination in the workplace.

In 1976, Iceland passed a law guaranteeing equal rights irrespective of gender. Since then there have been several partial-day strikes, most recently in 2018, with women walking off the job in the early afternoon, symbolizing the time of day when women, on average, stop