The Icelandic Women’s Rights Association – The Oldest Active Women’s Organization in Iceland
The Icelandic Women’s Rights Association (Kvenréttindafélag Íslands) was founded in 1907 and is the oldest women’s rights organization still active in the country. Its original mission was to secure political equality for women — including the right to vote, to run and to hold public office and the right to employment on the same terms as men.
As the first victories were achieved, the Association broadened its focus to promoting women’s rights and achieving gender equality in all areas of society. Today, it continues to work for the rights of all women living in Iceland, regardless of their background.
Over the years, the Association has fought for many key issues: the right to abortion, extended parental leave, accessible childcare, equal pay, and the elimination of gender-based violence. Inspired by the women’s movements in other Nordic countries, the Association emphasized international cooperation from the very beginning — a value it still upholds.
The Icelandic Women’s Rights Association also played a major role in establishing numerous trade unions for working women. This spirit of collaboration — crossing social and political boundaries — became a defining feature of the Icelandic women’s movement, and remains one of its greatest strengths today.
On the occasion of the Women’s Year 2025, marking 50 years since the first Women’s Day Off—when women stopped both paid and unpaid work to demand equality—the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association has launched the exhibition 110 Years of Women’s Struggle.
This exhibition builds on the association’s previous traveling exhibition from 2015, created to celebrate the centenary of women’s suffrage. That exhibition, titled 100 Years of the Women’s Rights Struggle, commemorated the fight for women’s rights over the past century, with a special focus on the right to vote, which was legalized on June 19, 1915. It was first displayed at a Nordic gender equality conference in Sweden in the summer of 2014 and concluded in Reykjavík in December 2015 after touring the country.
The exhibition has now been updated and improved. It consists of nine large posters arranged in chronological and thematic order, covering topics such as women’s associations, the suffrage movement, labor rights activism, the Women’s Day Off and the Red Stockings movement, the Women’s Alliance and women’s candidacies in the 1980s, Iceland’s first female presidents and prime ministers, women’s contributions to the arts, the fight against violence, and key milestones on a timeline.