Hafdis Karlsdottir, Soroptimist International of Iceland reports from CSW59

"After attending the Ministerial Round Tables in the morning and
listening to the Ministers and representatives from 15 countries ‘Making
the economy work for women and girl’, where they more or less explained
what needed to be done, attending ‘Cool Feminism – Exploring Ideas from
the North,’ one finally got to hear what could be done and how, not just
what needed to be done. I am proud of living in a country where the
Gender-gap is the smallest, BUT there is still a lot to do, like Eyglo
Hardardottir, Minister of Social Affairs said, "nothing happens just
because you wish for it, you will have to make it happen. If we don’t
include the men we will not move forward".

 

Photo: Cool Feminism CSW59

"After the opening
remarks by the Minister, the President of the Swedish Women’s Lobby,
Gertrud Åström told us about experiences from the Nordisk Forum 2014,
where more than 30.000 participants from the Nordic countries attended
and where Soroptimists organized events and had a very visible presence.
The Nordic countries joined forces to do something for gender equality
in the world. When starting preparing for the Nordisk Forum it was not
known if there would be a 5th conference or not. If that were to happen we
knew that there would be a lot of disagreements among the countries.
The rights of women are questioned from many different perspectives; from
cultural, from religious, from neoliberal idealism, even from leftists.
This Nordisk Forum was coming from the grass-root, not prepared by
governments. We showed that the women’s movement in the Nordic countries was very strong. There were more than 1,000 speakers and UN Women was
highly represented there.

 

Photo: Cool Feminism CSW59

An outcome document was written which
contains a number of demands and recommendations; based on the
Beijing Platform for Action,  we twisted it a little, for example we
did not talk about poverty but economics. The town of Malmö, where
Nordisk Forum was being held, signed the final document from the
Nordisk Forum, let’s let our hometown sign it!

Next speaker was
Gudrún Jónsdóttir, spokesperson for a Counselling and Information Centre
on Sexual Violence. Gudrún is a vivid speaker and a Feminism Activist
in ending violence and creating a just world. She said “we always have a
choice; you can sit at the kitchen table and whine, or stand up and do
something about it; there is always a way.” The women’s strikes in
Iceland are an example of how to do it. The first strike was in October
1975 where women went on strike for a day and refused to do any
domestic work or paid work as they were receiving less salaries than
men. Again in October 2010 they went on a strike and stopped working at
14:25 instead of 16:00 that day as then they had delivered the same
amount of work to receive the same salaries as the men were earning. A
film from the strike in 2010 was shown. “When the film from Oct. 2010 is
shown, women from the audience say “we cannot do that in my country”; I ask why do you say
that if you have not tried it?"

 

Photo: Video ‘Women’s Day Off’

Hanna Björg Vilhjalmsdottir,
who teaches gender studies in junior colleges, explained how she was
making a revolution in the classroom. “A revolution is a solution."

Gender
studies increases critical thinking among students. The way Gender
studies are being taught differs from studying by the book. We watch
something and we discuss it, we analyse it.

This learning will become who they are, the way they are thinking and viewing the world. Everyone in the classroom is active.

Hanna
says “It is very important that my boys don’t feel they are the bad
guys. Empowerment and responsibility is a big issue.” The course is
taught in 17 out of 33 junior colleges in Iceland and there are 14
feminist groups in those colleges that consist of both boys and girls.
The culture in the school changes and there is a lot of discussion in
Iceland about gender equality, this is contagious.

She then quoted Edmund Burke:

“Bad things happen when good people do nothing”, so all you good people, do something!

The
last presentation came from Irma Erlingsdóttir, Director of UNU-GEST
and Associate Professor. At UN University – Gender Equality studies and
training programme are being taught to students from developing
countries.

There is no blueprint to follow on the “different cultures call for different approaches.”