By: Marla Dukharan
November 4, 2025
As Hurricane Melissa battered Jamaica and Haiti, I was desperate for some distraction on a flight to Iceland, so I reluctantly turned to inflight entertainment, and was blown away by “The Day Iceland Stood Still”. So many lessons from that documentary, but in that moment as I was mentally grappling with the maddening issue of climate justice, one message resonated really strongly with me. The radical (for 1975 Iceland) Red Stocking women’s movement planned a one-day women’s strike, but had difficulty achieving universal support in a conservative society, until one woman suggested “if you don’t want to strike, what if we women just took a day off?” (including from unpaid care work at home). Bingo! A ‘day off’ was so much more palatable than a ‘strike’, that they achieved a 90% participation rate that spurred reforms and cultural shifts, such that in 1980 – just five years later – Iceland gave the world its first democratically elected female President.
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