The Sunday Best: The Women's Strike

08.24.22

In 1975, the women of Iceland went on strike. The doctors, the bus drivers, the teachers, the housewives, everyone. They felt the men in their country — their husbands, bosses, colleagues, and elected officials — didn’t respect and appreciate them, so they decided to give the men a day to think about the valuable resource they were taking for granted.

Without women, banks, factories and cafes all shuttered. Schools and daycares did too. Men were forced to take on the work that women had been doing silently for decades. And, unsurprisingly, just having to do that invisible labor for a single day upended their lives.

In the immortal words of Elle Woods, “What? Like it’s hard?”