When 90 percent of Icelandic women refused to work, and the country fell into chaos, they had succeeded.

On Friday, October 24, 1975, telephone lines went down; families scrounged for food; theaters cancelled performances; even the following day’s newspaper was half its average length. On an island with just 220,000 inhabitants, the country simply could not go on without the help of women.

The idea for the strike was hatched after the United Nations proclaimed 1975 International Women’s Year. An Icelandic coalition of radical women’s groups, the Red Stockings, suggested organizing a labor strike as a step further. Supporters agreed — as long as they called it a “day off,” a more palatable phrase for nervous employers.

In the days leading up to Women’s Day Off, excitement grew as supporters prepared. Women gathered over coffee and approached their workplaces for support. According to a Guardian article by Annadis Rudolfsdottir, who lived in Iceland at the time, her grandmother did not take the day off from the fish factory but the strike left her wondering, “Why were young men taking home higher wages than her when her job was no less physically strenuous?”

Reykjavik 1975: when women took the day off. (Icelandic Women’s History Archives)

That was the point of protest: not that everyone could or even wanted to walk away from her responsibilities, but that it got more people thinking about their role in societies where women’s participation and autonomy are undervalued.

Initially many men treated that Friday like a joke, wrote The New York Times. They figured it would be silly affair, a diversion. Then the day came. Mothers left children to their fathers’ care. But since many of Reykjavik’s women-operated childcare centers had closed that day, fathers brought their children to work. They armed themselves with candy and colored pencils to keep kids pacified. Stores sold out of sausages, a popular ready-made meal option at the time.

“We heard children playing in the background while the newsreaders read the news on the radio, it was a great thing to listen to, knowing that the men had to take care of everything,” Vigdis Finnbogadottir told the BBC. In 1980, she would become Iceland’s and Europe’s first female president — not to mention a single mother — and serve for 16 years.