Day 2: or Interview Plans Have Changed. Again.
When I first began to research the 1975 ‘Women’s Day Off’ in Iceland — I had a very clear idea of what I would encounter. Tales of heroism, staunch feminism, and a united vision of a day in which every single woman, young and old, momentarily suspended differences to defend a common cause. Needless to say my romantic ideas of revolution and the people’s struggle were soon replaced by a far more interesting and nuanced tale of conflict and compromise.
My first step was to find women who attended the strike in downtown Reykjavik. I approached an Icelandic friend, Freyja, to see if she could contact anyone who fit this profile. This proved more difficult than I presumed, as the first 3 women she encountered all told her that they had actually gone to work that day or were too young at the time— promptly shattering my grandiose vision of multitudes of grumpy men at home with all the babies. However, soon enough two women were found who attended the strike and were happy enough to be interviewed.
After learning that one of the women (95 years old) only spoke Icelandic I realised I would need to rethink my interview strategy. In an effort to use this as a learning experience — I decided to change this project to echo the frame of my dissertation. And so, this study, meant to be just one interview, morphed into an intergenerational semi-structured interview series on the experience of Icelandic women engaged in the quest for gender equality. At this point, I believe that the core of what I wish to understand is how these two generations of women perceive each other’s struggle in contradistinction to that of their own time. Much of this intends to be introspective — by understanding the social movements of others, I believe we can better comprehend what it is that we are striving for.
The rationality behind it lies partially in Wendy Brown’s seminal book ‘Politics out of History’. In essence we are interrogating from the supposition that time is nonlinear — that the past lives very much in our present and future as ‘ghosts’ or ‘haunts’. And as such, the present informs our perception of events past. Practically, this means that if I intend to question the meaning of the women’s struggle in Iceland today, I cannot do it without working simultaneously with those who laid the foundations — thus giving a historical contextualisation to our present ideologies.
I am also playing with the scope of participatory methods which allow the research participant to direct a portion of the focus of the research. However, from previous engagements with this format, I have found difficulty in balancing the intended core of the study with the often diverging interest of the participant. One never wants to force others to speak only on the subject that you find fascinating — but similarly it may be impractical to flow completely with unstructured conversation. What I aim to achieve is a form of collaboration in which we engage as researcher and participant with explicitly stated aims regarding our personal/professional interests — and actively work to find the converging points. How this will work in reality — we shall find out in a couple of days.
The first interview will be conducted with Freyja, who shall participate as a young Icelandic woman who has engaged in activities for gender equality (and is wholly supportive of equality in general). The goal is to co-develop a focus from which to conduct the subsequent interviews with the two women from the previous generation.
In preparation I have sent Freyja material and previous research that I have found on Iceland and asked her to go through it according to her interest. I hope this will allow us a form of common ground from which to converse — and I also am curious to see the potential for the material to function as elicitation devices. The resources can be found below:
- Women in Red Stockings — An excellent documentary about the women’s movement in Iceland that initiated the idea for the strike.
- A Doctoral Thesis on Women in Iceland (1984)
- ‘Women Strike, Iceland’s Men Feel the Pinch’ -An article in the Montreal Gazette from the day after the strike(Oct 25 1975).
- Photos and interviews from the Women’s History Archives - Iceland
