Ninety per cent of Icelandic women took part in the strike. Twenty-five thousand women gathered for a rally (the largest of more than twenty to take place throughout the country) in Reykjavík’s Downtown Square – a staggering figure in a country of then only 220,000 people.2 A year later, in 1976, Iceland passed the Gender Equality Act, which outlawed sex discrimination in workplaces and schools.3 Five years later, Vigdís Finnbogadóttir beat three men to become the world’s first democratically elected female head of state. And today, Iceland has the most gender-equal parliament in the world
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