In 1975, 90% of Icelandic women stopped and the country shut

On 24 October 1975 the newspapers of Reykjavík could not be typeset: the people who laid out the text were women, and none of them came in. That Friday, nine out of ten Icelandic women —90%— walked away at once from paid work, the house and the children. With 220,000 inhabitants in the whole country, that was enough to stop it.

They did not call it a strike. They called it Kvennafrídagurinn, «the women's day off», because a strike could cost you your job and a day off could not.

Banks opened with managers working the tills. Flights stayed on the ground. Schools and nurseries closed, so plenty of fathers took their children to the office, and the shops ran out of sausages, which was the dinner they knew how to make on their own. That afternoon 25,000 people gathered in central Reykjavík: one in nine of the entire country. In Britain that would be seven million.

The next day everyone went back to their place, but the sum had already been done. In 1976 parliament passed the equality act. In 1980 Vigdís Finnbogadóttir won the election and became the first woman in the world elected head of state by popular vote; she always said that Friday in October was what made it thinkable. She governed for sixteen years and won four elections in a row. Iceland has topped the global gender gap index since 2009.