Iceland’s women: going into politics on their own terms

Press, 20 May 1987, Page 17

Iceland’s women: going into politics on their own terms

With Lego sets and other toys scattered about on the floor, and children’s paintings on the walls, the shabby former hotel in the middle of Reykjavik looks like a nursery. ■ The only clue that it might be anything else is a poster with a large drawing of.a woman on her knees with a bucket and scrubbing brush and the slogan “Right girls, let’s clean up the city council.”. This is the headquarters of the Women’s Alliance, the new political force in Iceland; The poster is a reminder of its initiation into politics, in the municipal elections of 1982, when it won four seats at the fourth attempt. It went on to become the first feminist party in the world to win, parliamentary seats, and in the country’s recent general election, doubled its total of MPs to six. If its HQ is unconventional, the Alliance’s structure is even more so. It has no “members” as such but a list of 36 candidates. No MP may sit for more than four years, to prevent professionalism creeping in, but that seems to be its only rule.’ It does not believe in leaders. Magdalena Schram, 33, mother of three boys, and married to a travel agent, and Bergljot Baldursdotti,

38, with two children, a lecturer in linguistics at the University of Iceland, and married to a , psychologist, see themselves as typical of the movement. They first met at the centre, but both, at different times, have been students at Lancaster University and brought home with them a handful of degrees. Both women are from Reykjavik. Both are very much middle-class, though Iceland prides itself on not being classconscious. On the campaign trail in remote country areas, Magdalena says, she felt (as most feminists seem to do) that she, had known these women- all her life. .“We are all the same.” Both . have husbands who are happy to help at home while the .women are at the centre. Magdalena, however, prefers to talk about Nato or The Movement than her home life. But she is cross that she has to pay a childminder £25 a week to look after her young son in the afternoons, as the Icelandic school day is split into half-days, something the Alliance finds very inconvenient. “Having children should not stop you taking a part in politics. When you have a child you really start to get concerned about the way things are going,” they say. “As we have no leaders and no rules, we have to

exchange ideas,” say Bergljot. “We will go on discussing until we find some point at which we can all agree. Women work differently, we are not organised. We have managed like that so far and will not change.” “Can we trust the other parties?” she asks. “Of course, we want power, but on the other hand we have been most influential in opposition for four.

years.” The other parties, she says, “would like to get rid of us. We are too far from the Conservatives, who have been our opponents in local government and believe in Milton Friedman and the Social Democrats, who are proNato. “We must be on our guard or we will lose our integrity and our principles. We don’t like to

JENNY REES of Britain's “Sunday Telegraph" reports on the first feminist party in the world to win seats in parliament.

plot and plan like they do, we have always tried to be straightforward and open.” ’ ; On a ticket based on familiar women’s issues, in a country of 235,000 where nearly 80 per cent of women work and are paid half what men earn, the Alliance won 14 per cent of the vote in Reykjavik and between six and 10 per cent in the country. It is made up, in the main, of married women with children. Polls show its vote came 89 per cent from women and 11 per cent from men. , It wants equal pay — the standard of living on the island is high and comfortable and Icelanders like to travel, which is expensive — improved state child-care facilities to alleviate the relatively new problem of “latch-key” children. As a former political leader she wearily told me: “Yes, there is much to be done in these areas.” But it is in the details that the Alliance has earned a reputation of being less than reasonable. Reykjavic’s charismatic mayor, David Addeson, of the Conservative Inde-' pendent Party, says: “They are, quite simply, unrealistic. They will have to < become more, realistic in future.” One issue on which they may have to be more

pragmatic is a demand for Iceland, a member of Nato, to be nuclear-free and for the Americans to give up their, military base at Reykjavic on which, they say, the southwestern peninsula of the island is economically dependent It is not the Alliance’s house-wifely side that grates quite as much as a determination to do things its way, and bring what these women call a bit of femininity into the political system. All those fishermen’s wives who are the backbone of the country when their husbands were at sea “were invisible,” says Magdalena. Their views were never heard. “It’s very unjust. We don’t want to be like men; we want to be equal. Why should we earn less because we bear the children? “We want to keep our femininity and to ensure that women’s culture and traditions are respected. We go into politics on our own terms.” Part of their terms are that the political vocabulary, seen as too violent and military, is changed. This is Bergjiot’s speciality. “Politicians talk about fighting. We don’t like that. That is not our style. Then they talk about ‘flirting’ with other parties. That is too sexual. The idioms need adjusting, which we are doing.”