Tens of thousands of women and non-binary people across Iceland, including the country’s prime minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, are expected to stop work, both paid and unpaid, on Tuesday in the first strike of its kind in nearly half a century, reports The Guardian. Organisers hope the women’s strike, whose confirmed participants include fishing industry workers, teachers, nurses and the prime minister, will bring society to a standstill to draw attention to the country’s ongoing gender pay gap and widespread gender-based and sexual violence.

The event will mark the first full-day women’s strike since 1975, when 90% of Icelandic women refused to work as part of ‘kvennafrí’ (women’s day off), leading to pivotal change including the world’s first female elected president of a country. Organisers of the latest strike, some of whom took part in the 1975 strike, say the core demand for women’s work to be valued remains unmet 48 years on. Jakobsdóttir said she expected the prime minister’s office to stop working.

Despite being considered a global leader on gender equality, topping the 2023 World Economic Forum’s global gender gap rankings for the 14th consecutive year, in some professions Icelandic women still earn 21% less than men, and more than 40% of women have experienced gender-based or sexual violence. The strike is calling for the gender pay gap to be closed by publishing the wages of workers in female-dominant professions, and for action against gender-based and sexual violence, with more focus on the perpetrators.