October 24 marked the 50th anniversary of the Women’s Day of Peace in Iceland, when 90 percent of Icelandic women commemorated the United Nations International Women’s Year by going on strike. That means not only did working women not go to work, but homemakers told their husbands they would have to fend for themselves that day, including taking care of the kids. This short, rather plain documentary is mostly a series of talking head interviews with women who participated in the action on the day in question. Naturally, they are all much older, and the decades-long perspective is interesting in the way it reveals how uncertain they were at the time and how much they’ve gained since then. Iceland is famous for enjoying the largest portion in the world of women in government (48 percent of parliament) and as business leaders, and the movie goes to some length to prove that the Women’s Day of Peace had much to do with it, because it shows how everything changed after that.

Prior to the action, Iceland was as sexist as any other country in the world. Girls who dreamed of occupations were derided by their parents and teachers, but at the same time many women who married still worked in factories and on farms while keeping house and raising children. In fact, one woman who grew up on a farm said that she was “equal to any man” she worked beside by default, though, culturally speaking, she could never expect to advance upwards either within the agricultural community or outside it if she decided to pursue an education. Female clerical workers testify that they kept the gears moving at banks, media companies, and government offices while earning much less pay than their male counterparts. Those who were stay-at-home wives complained about the ritualistic aspect of their vocations. “Christmas was a terrible chore,” one says about her domestic responsibilities, not only toward her immediate family but toward her extended one. Of course, all these gripes were universal—it’s one of the reasons the UN made a point of declaring 1975 for women—but the fact that women from all walks of life in Iceland could organize a national strike on such short notice points to something extraordinary, and the film does a good job of explaining how the strike came about and how it operated in real time. The most interesting aspect, and one that seems only apparent in hindsight, is how successful the strike was in spite of the compromises made. “We loved our male chauvinists,” one woman says wryly, and there was unease among a great many participants of spooking the men who had oppressed them. “They assumed we wanted to take over,” said another. So while the action was a general strike, it wasn’t called that. “Day of Peace” was an anodyne concession. Anything that smacked of communism and revolution was tamped down. “We weren’t active in a nasty way,” is how one woman puts it.

The many anecdotes about husbands being forced to cook for themselves and stubborn female managers getting dragged to demonstrations for the sake of feminist enlightenment are amusing but in a sense detract from the most edifying aspect of the story, which is the power of collective action. The overarching emotional tone of the interviews is giddiness: After 50 years these women still can’t believe they pulled it off, and many admit it was the most “fun” day of their lives. In that regard I could have used more input from actual working class women as to how the subsequent changes improved their own lives. Almost all the witnesses are professionals—major movers in the business, legal, and media worlds, including Vigdis Finnbogadottir, who was president of Iceland for 16 years, the first woman in the world to be democratically elected to her country’s highest office. Good for her, but I wanted to hear more about the woman who as a little girl aspired to be a ship captain. 

In English and Icelandic. Now playing in Tokyo at Theater Image Forum Aoyama (03-5766-0114).

The Day Iceland Stood Still home page in Japanese

photo (c) 2024 Other Noises and Krumma Films