Companies and government agencies employing
at least 25 people will have to obtain certification of equal-pay policies.
A new law making it illegal to pay men more
than women has taken effect in Iceland.
The legislation came into force on Monday,
the first day of 2018.
Under the new rules, companies and
government agencies employing at least 25 people will have to obtain government
certification of their equal-pay policies.
Those that fail to prove pay parity will
face fines.
"The legislation is basically a
mechanism that companies and organisations ... evaluate every job that's being
done, and then they get a certification after they confirm the process if they
are paying men and women equally," said Dagny Osk Aradottir Pind, a board
member of the Icelandic Women's Rights Association.
"It's a mechanism to ensure women and
men are being paid equally," she told Al Jazeera.
"We have had legislation saying that
pay should be equal for men and women for decades now but we still have a pay
gap."
Iceland, an island country in the North
Atlantic Ocean that is home to approximately 323,000 people, has a strong
economy, based on tourism and fisheries.
For the past nine years, it has been ranked
by the World Economic Forum (WEF) as the world's most gender-equal country.
The Global Gender Gap Report uses markers
such as economic opportunity, political empowerment, and health and survival to
gauge the state of gender equality in a country.
Since the reports began in 2006, Iceland
has closed around 10 percent of its total gender gap, making it one of the
fastest-improving countries in the world.
The new legislation was supported by
Iceland's centre-right government, as well as the opposition, in a parliament
where nearly 50 percent of all members are women.
"I think that now people are starting
to realise that this is a systematic problem that we have to tackle with new
methods," said Aradottir Pind.
"Women have been talking about this
for decades and I really feel that we have managed to raise awareness, and we
have managed to get to the point that people realise that the legislation we
have had in place is not working, and we need to do something more," she
added.
The Icelandic government plans to
completely eradicate the wage gap by 2020.
Gender inequality worldwide
According to the latest WEF report, the top
five best performers in the global gender gap are Iceland, Norway, Finland,
Rwanda and Sweden.
Yemen, on the other hand, is currently the
lowest-ranked of the 144 countries measured in the report.
The war-torn country has been
low-performing in terms of economic participation and opportunity for several
years.
Fifty-two countries fell below the global
average in 2017, including China, Liberia and the United Arab Emirates, while
60 saw their overall gender gap decrease.
Hungary was the only European country to be
ranked lower than the global average, having scored poorly on political
empowerment.
Article Source:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/iceland-country-legalise-equal-pay-180101150054329.html