Iceland Becomes The First Country In The World To Legally Pay Men And Women Equally

#1

Iceland now has a law that makes it illegal for men to get more pay than women. Those that fail to pay equal pays will be subjected to heavy fines. Though the law was passed last year but came into effect this week and is the first law of its kind that covers both the public and the private sectors.

#2

Although the law came into action just this week it seems like Iceland has already won the war against gender discrimination as for the last nine years the country has been ranked at the top for gender equality by The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the criteria includes the major sectors like education, economics, health and politics.

An apparent example of this is the Iceland parliament, which is the only one in the world that has around 48% of the women and that too without any quota.

#3

The struggle to close the wage gap was also not an easy fight for the Icelandic women as they had been fighting for quite a long time for the justice. Their way of protest was unique yet very effective. It is reported that in 2016, the women in Iceland took their day off at the office at 2:38 pm, to protest pay inequality.

Here time playing a symbol as this measured up to the time women stop receiving their pay in 9 to 5 job as compared to the men. The protest was fruitful for all those ladies fighting for their rights and the country moved to change the law on International Women's Day, 2017.

#4

A member of the Icelandic Women's Right Association, Dagny Osk Aradottir Pind said, "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. It’s a mechanism to ensure women and men are being paid equally. We have had legislation saying that pay should be equal for men and women for decades now but we still have a pay gap."

#5

From research, it is found there are many other countries which have a legislation which states that men and women must be equally paid but only Iceland is the one which has put the law into action. For example, USA has an Equal Pay Act in place since 1963 but with the pay gap, it is quite obvious that America has a long way to go before it can overcome the pay disparity.

#6

The remarkable thing about the recent law of equal pay that has been passed in Iceland is that it does not depend on the employee to prove that she is receiving unfair pay, instead, it is on the companies to prove that they are paying fair to avoid legal action against them.

#7

The new law will be applied to the companies in Iceland that has 25 employees and more. The companies will be checked for the law every three years and if they are not following the law the company will be fined accordingly on daily basis charges.

#8

As stated by BBC, although the main focus of the law is to eradicate gender discrimination, functionally it will also stop pay discrimination on "race, religion, disability, occupational disability, age and sexual orientation grounds."

#9

Though there is still a long way to go, if Iceland can take such a revolutionary step then the only right and sensible thing is that other countries should follow suit to set an example of equality. The US Senator, Bernie Sanders also praised Iceland for its pay equity legislation and stated, "We must follow the example of our brothers and sisters in Iceland and demand equal pay for equal work now, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or nationality."