The legislation, which was passed last year, came into effect on Monday, the first day of 2018, legalising equal pay between men and women. Under the new rules, companies and government agencies employing at least 25 people must obtain government certification of their equal-pay policies.
Those to fail to adhere to 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.
Iceland Is Already A Leader In Gender Parity
The World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked Iceland as the top country for gender equality for the last nine years based on criteria involving economics, education, health, and politics.
Icelandic women make up 48 per cent of the nation’s parliament – without a reservation system.
Happy 2018! Iceland has just made it illegal to men more than women for comparable jobs.
This is their new prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, a feminist who says she’s dedicated to fighting for gender equality. pic.twitter.com/KVuipKE3mH
— badass woman alert (@badass_w) January 3, 2018
In 2016, thousands of women left work two hours early and headed to Austurvollur square in the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik. In this particular case punctuality mattered. The women were trimming a typical 9-to-5 workday by precisely two hours and 22 minutes, or around 30 per cent.
Thirty per cent also happens to be the gap in average annual income for men and women in Iceland. For every dollar a man makes, women make 72 cents. Those assembled at Austurvollur shouted Ut, or “Out,” to discrimination against women.
Since the WEF reports began, Iceland has made a stunning progress in eradicating inequality. The country had closed around 10 per cent of its total gender gap, making it one of the fastest-improving countries across the globe.
According to Al Jazeera, Iceland plans to eradicate gender pay gap completely by 2022.
Gender Inequality Statistics Worldwide
According to the latest World Economic Forum report, the top five best performers in the global gender gap are Iceland, Norway, Finland, Rwanda and Sweden.
Yemen, on the other hand, is presently the lowest-ranked of the 144 countries measured in the report. The war-torn nation has been performing low in terms of economic participation and opportunity for several years.
In 2017, 52 countries fell below the global average, including China, Liberia and the United Arab Emirates, while 60 countries witnessed a decline in their overall gender gap.
The push for pay transparency has grown stronger than ever and Iceland is leading by example for implementation of such reforms in other parts of the world too.