1st vs. 118th: On Gender Equality, Japan and Iceland Took Different Roads

Earlier this year, Japan’s Emperor Naruhito asked Iceland’s president why Iceland leads the world in gender equality. The question highlighted a striking contrast between the two nations. Iceland has held the top spot in the Global Gender Gap Report for years, while Japan ranks near the bottom.

Both countries saw strong women’s rights movements in the 1970s. Iceland’s nationwide strike pushed leaders to reform laws and expand opportunities for women. Japan also saw protests for liberation, reproductive rights, and workplace equality, but the pace of change was slower and less sweeping. This history helps explain today’s wide gap in gender equality.

A good question

On May 27 this year, Emperor Naruhito met with Icelandic President Halla Tómasdóttir at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. During the meeting, the Emperor asked the president why Iceland has advanced so far in gender equality, as the country is known for leading the world in this field. 

According to the Imperial Household Agency, Emperor Naruhito asked President Tómasdóttir, “I have heard that Iceland is always number one in the field of gender equality. How has this been achieved?”

The president pointed to a nationwide women’s strike nearly 50 years ago and explained, “It’s the result of efforts built up over many years. With women’s advancement in society, the economy has grown stronger and education has improved.”

Iceland, located in Northern Europe, is recognized as a global leader in gender equality. For many years, it’s ranked first in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, which measures gender disparities worldwide.

In the 2025 report, Iceland again held the top spot at number one – a spot it’s held for 14 years. By contrast, Japan ranked 118th out of 146 countries – a result not much different from its poor showings in 2024, 2023, and 2022.

Both Iceland and Japan saw women’s rights movements in the 1970s, yet the outcomes differ greatly today. To understand this gap in gender equality, let’s look back at the history of those movements in each country.

Women’s day off: women’s rights movement in Iceland in the 1970s

On October 24, 1975, 90% of Icelandic women stopped working for a day.

On that day, women refused to cook, clean, or provide childcare. They walked off their jobs in offices, schools, factories, and airlines. Known as the “Women’s Day Off,” the strike was born out of frustration with low pay, workplace inequality, and decades of conservative policies that pushed women out of the labor market.

The idea first came from the Redstockings, a radical women’s movement founded in 1970, and gained momentum when the United Nations declared 1975 International Women’s Year. A diverse national committee of women — from teachers and single mothers to conservatives and union leaders — rallied behind the plan. Organizers wrote letters, made phone calls, and filled the airwaves to spread the word.

When the day came, more than 25,000 women filled the streets of Reykjavík with songs and speeches. The scale of the action shut down the country: newspapers went unpublished, flights were canceled, the telephone system failed without female operators, and men scrambled to care for children in their workplaces.

The impact of the strike

The impact was immediate and lasting. The strike forced the public to recognize the economic and social value of women’s labor, both paid and unpaid.

In the years that followed, Iceland passed its first Gender Equality Act, banned wage discrimination, and amended the Constitution to guarantee equal rights for women. Representation of women in Parliament grew. In 1980, the nation elected Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the world’s first democratically chosen female head of state.

Looking back, President Vigdís described the Women’s Day Off as a watershed moment.

“What happened that day was the first step for women’s emancipation in Iceland,” she said. “It completely paralyzed the country and opened the eyes of many men.”

The strike showed the power of collective action and set Iceland on a faster path toward closing the gender gap, a record it still holds today.

Three women’s rights movements in Japan in the 1970s

Women’s Lib in the early 1970s

One of the most prominent women’s rights movements in Japan during the 1970s was the Women’s Lib movement. “Women’s Lib” is short for “Women’s Liberation,” a wave of feminist activism that spread worldwide from the 1960s to the 1970s and took root in Japan in the early 1970s.

At the time, Japanese society imposed rigid gender roles on women. They were expected to give unconditional love as mothers, devote themselves to husbands as wives, and handle housework and childcare as a matter of course. It was also common for women to leave their jobs upon marriage or childbirth, a practice known as “marriage resignation.”

Women who felt suffocated by these expectations rejected male-centered values and demanded the liberation of women’s bodies and lives. On October 21, 1970, Japan’s first women’s liberation protest took place in Shibuya during International Antiwar Day. 

It was organized by Group Fighting Women (ぐるーぷ・闘う女; Grupu・tatakauonna), founded by Tanaka Mitsu. Tanaka emerged as the charismatic leader of the Japanese Women’s Lib movement and argued that women’s bodies and lives must be freed from state and male control. The protest accelerated the movement nationwide. By the following summer, more than 300 women gathered at a “Lib camp” to share their vision of freedom. In November 1970, the first Women’s Lib conference in Japan was held. November 14 is still remembered today as “Women’s Lib Day.”

The battle for reproductive rights

Another prominent women’s rights movement in Japan during the early 1970s was the campaign against revisions to the Eugenic Protection Law.

Enacted in 1948, the law legalized abortion under the banner of “protecting maternal health.” However, it also aimed to “prevent the birth of inferior offspring” and served as the basis for forced sterilizations of people with disabilities and Hansen disease.

A 1972 revision bill proposed three major changes:

• Removing the economic clause that allowed abortion for financial reasons
• Adding a fetal clause that permitted abortion if the fetus had a severe disability
• Creating a system where state-run counseling centers would encourage childbirth at younger ages

Women in the Lib movement denounced the removal of the economic clause as a system of state control over women’s bodies. From 1972 to 1973, they organized rallies and street demonstrations across the country under the slogan, “It is women who decide whether to give birth or not.” Their fight was not only to protect abortion rights but also to oppose a system where the state could decide how many children women should have and who should be born.

In the end, the bill was scrapped, blocking what would have amounted to a de facto abortion ban. The movement left an important legacy by defending women’s bodily autonomy and became an early example of reproductive rights activism in Japan, influencing later feminist and human rights movements.

Workplace gender equality movement 

By the late 1970s, workplace gender inequality had become a major issue in Japan. Women faced low wages and saw non-regular employment expand rapidly, fueling concerns across society. In response, female union members joined forces across different national centers. They launched a large-scale campaign demanding a law to guarantee equal employment opportunities for men and women.

International developments also spurred momentum. In 1975, the United Nations declared International Women’s Year and set out the themes of “Equality, Development, and Peace.” The UN then launched the “Decade for Women,” which gave further push to Japan’s own movement.

In the same year, women’s groups and labor union women’s divisions came together to form the International Women’s Year Liaison Group. Around the same time, House of Councillors members Ichikawa Fusae and Tanaka Sumiko launched the Association for Action, which gained attention for challenging fixed gender roles.

On November 22, 1975, the International Women’s Year Japan Conference brought together 46 organizations and 2,000 participants. The meeting adopted resolutions, and the following month, the Liaison Group was formally established to put them into action.

These movements laid the groundwork for policies that supported women balancing work and family life. They also set the stage for the later passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Law.

Iceland moved forward, Japan met resistance

Both Iceland and Japan saw major women’s rights movements in the 1970s, but the outcomes diverged.

In Iceland, the Women’s Day Off shut down the country and forced leaders to act. Lawmakers passed gender equality reforms, women entered parliament, and society recognized women’s economic power.

In Japan, activists fought for liberation, reproductive rights, and workplace equality. They sparked debate and blocked restrictive laws, but progress stayed slow. Change came in fragments, and structural barriers remained firm.

Unlike Iceland, Japan’s feminist gains later faced organized backlash. After the Basic Act for a Gender Equal Society passed in 1999, conservative groups and politicians began targeting “gender free” education and local equality ordinances. They argued these policies threatened traditional family roles and cultural values. Gender and feminist studies specialists such as Yamaguchi Tomomi and Shimizu Akiko describe this period as the start of a lasting anti-gender backlash that slowed reforms.

That resistance continues today with the rise of the right-wing party Sanseitō. In the 2025 upper house elections, Sanseitō grew from one seat to 14 while promoting “traditional values” and attacking gender equality policies as harmful to Japan’s birthrate and culture.

This long history of resistance, combined with current momentum, offers a clue to why Japan continues to rank near the bottom in global gender equality.

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