The Women's Equality Party 'day off' is just what this country needs – problem is, no one would take part

There’s certainly a need to remind Britain of the economic value of women’s work. The number of women in paid employment in Britain hit a record high three years ago, but the gap in pay between men and women is persistent and unmoving at around 18 per cent

Catherine Mayer, Sandi Toksvig and Sophie Walker are the founders of the Women's Equality Party (Charlie Forgham Bailey)

Across Iceland on 24 October 1975, the nation’s women took the day off. Whatever they were due to do in those 12 working hours – whether they were expected to don overalls and work the factory floors, open shops and ring the tills or spend the day holding a baby or caring for older relatives – they simply didn’t. The economy ground to a halt. In one single day, half of the population had proved the worth and the value of their work. Within months they had achieved significant change.

Before the strike, the gender pay gap was an estimated 40 per cent. Women also found they were unable to obtain paid work outside the home due to the expectation that they would shoulder the burden of childcare and home-making. Four decades on, the picture couldn’t look more different. Iceland tops the World Economic Forum’s gender gap index, has been named as the best place in the world to be a working woman and boasts the most effective shared parental leave legislation in Scandinavia, with a use-it-or-lose it clauses that pushes men to make time for their new families.

The effect of that one day in 1975 in eliminating entrenched sexist attitudes was rapid and quite staggering. Without it, would Iceland be the nation it is now? Local women doubt it. So now Britain’s Women’s Equality Party want some of the action. Leader Sophie Walker revealed this week that the party is preparing to organise a so-called Women’s Day Off in the UK, to be held in 2018.

Just like in Iceland, Walker said the day would “show the value of women’s economic contributions, as well as underline the crucial role women play in holding together families, communities and industries. It is only when this is truly valued that women will be judged equally alongside men. Our day will be an historic moment. It will change British culture for good.”

I want to agree. The activist in me, the romantic part that was moved to tears by the sight of millions of women marching on city centres around the world to protest the misogyny of Donald Trump, wants to believe that, like Iceland, we can have our day off and reap the long-term rewards.

There’s certainly a need to remind Britain of the value of women’s work. The number of women in paid employment in Britain hit a record high three years ago, but the gap in pay between men and women is persistent and unmoving at around 18 per cent; by some measures, the gap is beginning to grow. Women in Britain still shoulder the majority of the burden of other work, from household chores and care giving across the generations to the “emotional labour” which does indeed provide that glue that holds families fast and keeps communities functioning.

But as much as I want a single day to mark a turning point for British women, I fear there’s work to do before we’re ready for such an act of defiance. The practicalities are part of the problem. In Iceland in the 1970s, 90 per cent of women took part in the day off – but that only amounted to somewhere just over 100,000 people. In Britain, we’d be asking 32.2 million people to lay down tools and take a day off. Never mind the legality of an unauthorised, unballoted strike – it’s a virtual impossibility to coordinate an action on that scale even with a year’s notice.

Sadly, if only fraction of the UK’s women take part in the 2018 Day Off, it simply won’t have its desired effect: proving in economic terms the hidden value of women, particularly when it comes to unpaid roles in the home or involving care and support, requires an “all in” attitude. The system has to collapse entirely, if just for a handful of hours, to prove to those to who doubt it that the system is propped up by the exploitation of women. A smaller protest, even if it takes in as many as three or four million women, could even do the opposite; if some men, particularly those in influential decision-making positions within major employers, don’t directly feel the effects, are women counter-productively suggesting their efforts are superfluous?

I don’t believe that, of course. But the unintended consequences of feminist campaigns are an important consideration. Though women fought hard to help reduce (though of course, not eliminate) gender discrimination at work with the passing of the 1970 Equal Pay Act in the UK, women did not predict how this progressive legislation would be exploited by employers to pay everyone less by reducing the assumption that a full-time salary would not only support an individual but their dependents. Now most families choose to have two members of the household in work to secure the same quality of life that was once secured with one salary.

Meanwhile, the pay gap in Iceland is still floating somewhere between 14 and 18 per cent. In many ways, women in the UK are fighting the same battles as women in Iceland. They may have a better system of parental care, but women in work are still facing barriers to their success.

The Women’s Day Off is an exciting idea. I hope that it inspires a new generation of women to know their value and to demand what they are worth. But will it solve the big question of why Britain is sitting at number 18 on the World Economic Forum gender gap index, below Namibia and Nicaragua? Electing a 50 per cent female parliament would be a better step towards that.