REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Iceland this week began putting in place a new law that requires companies and government agencies to prove they are paying men and women equally, positioning the country at the forefront of global efforts to minimize gender inequality. Following years of passing legislation promoting equal pay, employers that fail to ensure pay parity will now be subject to fines, thanks to a law passed last spring that went into effect Monday. “The legislation is basically a mechanism that companies and organizations … 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,” Dagny Osk Aradottir Pind, a board member of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association, told Al Jazeera. Iceland already leads the world in pay equity between men and women, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, and this move will likely only give the North Atlantic island nation an even bigger lead over the rest of the world when it comes to treating men and women equally at work.
A new Icelandic law goes into effect which requires government agencies and companies with more than 24 full-time employees to prove they are paying men and women equally, as required by existing legislation.