Reykjavík Grapevine - 27.06.2003, Qupperneq 6

- the reykjavík grapevine -6 june 27th - july 10th, 2003
“How much more respectable is the
woman who earns her own bread
by fulfilling any duty than the most
accomplished beauty!” When an early
British feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft,
published her treatise “A Vindication of
the Rights of Woman” in 1792, her views
on working women, as on everything
else, were somewhat ahead of their
time. But the past few decades have
brought a dramatic change. Women
started first to trickle, then to flood
into the labour market, pushing up their
share of the workforce. Within the Nordic
region - where government supplied
day-care is the norm - women are now
almost half of the employed with Iceland
ranking pretty high with an impressive
47% female workforce. In the first world,
paid jobs for women have become the
new norm.
At the beginning of the last century,
few countries had universal suffrage
for men, let alone women. By the early
1920s the Nordic countries, America
and Germany among others had given
their women the right to vote. Last
Thursday, Icelandic women (and some
men) celebrated the fact that on June
nineteenth 1915 a constitution for
Iceland was signed by Christian X, the
king of Denmark giving women (over
forty) the right to vote and run for
parliament. Although they were not
the first to get the right to vote, they
certainly weren’t the last. Their sisters in
England waited until 1928, in France till
1944, Greece 1952 and amazingly the
women of Portugal were kept out of the
voting booths until 1978.
Is it better to be a woman now than
89 years ago? In many ways, the answer
has to be yes. In the affluent part of the
word, women have got the same legal
rights as men; to vote, to work, to do
as they damn well please. They have
equal access to education at all levels,
and make full use of it (two thirds of
the students that graduate at Iceland’s
biggest university are women). If they are
working, they are protected up to a point
by equal-pay and equal opportunities
legislation. Sexual harassment at work
may not have stopped dead, but it is
being more effectively curtailed - if only
because of the risk of legal fees and
damages. Some of these changes may
have been speeded up by feminism,
however tedious that may have seemed
at its height. But the most effective
instrument for changing attitudes has
been women’s mass exodus from home
to workplace. For most women in most
of the richer countries, being “just a
housewife” has become a thing of the
past.
It’s always lonely at the top, but
if you are a woman it can be utterly
desolate. Whether in politics, business,
the professions or academia, the top
layer everywhere is almost exclusively
male. This may not come as a surprise
in countries where few women work, but
it is also largely true, and more baffling,
in America and in the Nordic region,
where nearly half the labour force is
female. Even though discrimination has
been systematically erased from our
laws, women are still pretty far from
catching up in a few profound ways.
In the political arena for instance,
women are clearly gaining ground but
the equality line is still far off. Of the
63 recently elected members of the
Icelandic parliament, only 19 (30%) are
women - down from 22 after the last
election. Within the EU the numbers are
even worse, women make up only about
20% of national Parliaments in most
member states. France and Greece
have the most pathetic gender ratio
with 8,3% and 8,7% respectively. The
Nordic countries are in a league of their
own with Sweden, Denmark, Norway and
Finland all boasting at least 37% female
representation in their parliaments, way
ahead of their central and southern
European allies.
When it comes to national
governments, the statistics rise slightly
compared to parliament. Within the EU
member countries, almost 25% are
female with the Nordic countries again
leading the pack. Sweden’s ministers are
fifty-fifty male and female, with Denmark
Norway and Finland all heading in that
direction. Compared to their Viking
cousins the Icelandic situation is pretty
striking - only two of twelve ministers (a
sad 16%) in the government are women.
It’s only fair to note, though, that this will
change slightly in fifteen months when
there will be a reshuffle of the ministries,
which will raise the number of female
ministers to three or perhaps four,
depending on how the dice rolls.
But even in the progressive north
where the ministries are filling up with
women, more often than not they get
the “soft” jobs such as health, education,
labour, social affairs and culture. The
heavyweight portfolios such as foreign
affairs, finance and justice almost
invariably go to men – Iceland, for
example, has never had a woman PM
and of the two women ministers now
in office, one is running the recently
established and still fairly miniscule,
environment ministry. Finland is the
only country where at some point a
woman has held every single portfolio.
Finland’s first female prime minister,
Anneli Jaatteenmaki, has just resigned,
however, after just two months in office
following a scandal triggered by a
presidential aide’s admission that he had
leaked government information to her at
her request on talks about Iraq between
her predecessor, Paavo Lipponen, and
US president George Bush. Women
prime ministers that actually sit out
their term, such as Britain’s notorious
Margaret Thatcher, remain as rare as
hen’s teeth.
Although there has been progress
in the political arena – albeit slow and
perhaps disappointing – some say that
since our society is increasingly being
run by not politicians but businessmen
the real focus should be on who’s running
the businesses. Perhaps surprisingly,
there doesn’t seem to be much of a
correlation between
the number of
women in politics
and the number of
women in high-level
management posts.
In Germany, for
example, 30% of all
MPs are women, but
a recent survey of
the 70,000 largest
companies showed
that women’s share
of top executive
and board positions
was only 1-3%. In
America, which is
generally thought to
be a decade or more ahead of Europe
on such matters, women hold about
10% of the board seats of Fortune 500
companies whereas in the House of
Representatives women have a share
of only 12.6% and in the Senate just
9% which is far behind most of their
friends in old and new Europe. In Iceland,
women CEO’s are few and far between,
and the bigger the business, the less
likely you are to find a woman running
the show. A quick look at the boards of
the companies listed at the Icelandic
stock exchange reveals that for every
woman, you can find at least twenty
men. In a society increasingly ruled by
big business, women are still clearly out
of the loop.
Does it matter who’s in charge?
Is there really still such a long way to
go? As it turns out, the answers largely
depend on whom you ask.
Most people would probably argue
that gender biased decisions, are
decisions that are based on arbitrary
and illogical factors that can be linked
directly to the sex of the person involved.
In this sense, it’s discrimination if and
only if a person of either sex is rewarded
or punished for something that can’t be
traced to something that explains and
validates that decision. According to this
view if women are, for instance, more
likely to quit their jobs to raise children,
then the employer is well within his rights
if he decides to pick a male employee
over an equally, or even better, qualified
female one, since this is simply in the
best interest of the company. This view
is usually referred to as the difference
approach to sexual discrimination.
But this approach has come under
attack. Many equal rights advocates
say that sexual discrimination is woven
into our social fabric. Because even if
individuals had equal rights to pursue the
roles they wanted (which they don’t), this
doesn’t allow for the fact that these roles
were predominantly defined and created
by men –A reflection of their values and
ideas. With this approach we are simply
giving women the chance to compete as
men. This approach has usually been
referred to as the dominance approach
to sexual equality.
A recent study by the Centre for
Gender Equality in Iceland revealed that
women get on average only about 70%
of the salary of the typical male. The
study also revealed that of the missing
30% about one third can be attributed
to the fact that women simply get paid
less for the same jobs as men (this is
what the difference approach theorists
want to rectify). The rest is accounted
for by the fact that typical female
professions pay less than the typical
male professions. For some reason, the
professions that men choose (finance,
engineering, computer science) tend
to be more valued by society than the
typical female professions (teaching,
nursing).
So what’s the conclusion? As I said
earlier, it depends: If you’re a right wing
“the market is always right” type, you
would choose the difference approach
and say that there’s a fairly short way to
go but rest assured, the invisible hand is
working it’s magic and the problem will
soon rectify itself. If, on the other hand,
you’re a left wing “justice should prevail”
kind of gal (or guy) then you opt for
the more radical dominance approach
and assert “screw this, where’s the
revolution?”
A N A LY S I S
On June 19th, 1915, Icelandic women were given
the basic human right to vote. Some say that since
then there have been enormous changes in our so-
ciety while others argue that the progress has been
much too slow. Are we getting close to equality or
is John Lennon’s tribute to the fight “Woman is the
Nigger of the World” still as relevant today as it was
thirty, ninety or even a thousand years ago?
IS WOMAN STILL THE NIGGER
OF THE WORLD?
H
ARALDU
R IN
GI
ÞORLEIFSSON
BYarticle
The 17th of June was celebrated in
predictably rainsoaked circumstanc-
es. Prime Minister Davíð Oddson
made a speech about the need for
a continued US military presence.
Some protesters carrying placards
were removed by police.
The value of the Icelandic króna has
gone down, and this is being blamed on
the insecurity over the debate regarding
the continuing presence of the US Army
in Keflavík.
The employee who embezzled funds
from the telephone company Landsíminn
took more money than had previously
been thought. The current total is 250
million krónur. The investigation is still
ongoing.
Iceland has stated that it will hunt some
250 whales in the next year for scien-
tific purposes. The International whaling
council has protested the decision.
Only 42.000 tons of herring remain to be
fished out of a quota of 110.000 from
the Norwegian-Icelandic herring fields.
Guðmundur Árni, of the political party
Samfylking, currently one of three par-
ties running Reykjavík, has said that his
party should run on its own in the next
elections, hence annoying the other coa-
lition members. The debate rages on.
The naming commission has rejected
the name Elíza spelt with a z, on grounds
that there is no tradition for it. It rejected
the spelling of Íris as Iris on the same
grounds. Children can not be christened
those names in this country.
About 30 children with mental problems
await help, and the chairman of the Child
psychiatry association says the situation
is unacceptable. A committee has been
set up to deal with the problem.
A teacher in a primary school somewhere
in the countryside took matters into his
own hands regarding the bad behaviour
of his 13 year old students, and glued
their mouths together with tape in order
to get some peace and quiet. Police are
investigating, and he could face up to
three years in prison.
Some faint tremors have been felt near
Ölfus. Geologists say this might be the
prelude to a bigger earthquake.
A coast guard helicopter picked two
injured people up at sea, on from a
Russian ship and the other one from a
Bahaman one.
The biggest lobster ever caught in Ice-
land was recently caught in Skeiðársd-
júpið. The lobster was 81 mm.
A man fell to his death in Ísafjörður while
hiking on a mountain. All available res-
cue services were called out to search
for him, but it is believed he was killed
instantaneously.
A poll into attitudes of people towards
the church has revealed that a lot of peo-
ple are not kindly disposed towards it.
Bishop Karl Sigurbjörnsson has said that
if the church doesn’t change and learn to
speak the language of the present day, it
might be in danger of dying out.
A 14 year old boy fell into a geyser out-
side of Hveragerði. He was picked up by
a helicopter and is currently in hospital
with burns to hands and feet.
A poll in the Guardian has named Iceland
its favourite European destination. What
is it about Brits and rainsoaked islands?
Eimskip shipping company has an-
nounced that it’s moving its headquar-
ters. Did Grapevine’s expose last issue
of the Swastika on their building have
anything to do with this?
In the future, the majority of these graduates might be
women. Er...
NEWS IN BRIEF