Reykjavík Grapevine - 16.06.2017, Síða 18

Fair Pay,
Fair Play
It's time to enforce gender wage laws in Iceland
Words: Nanna Árnadóttir
Photo: Art Bicnick
OPINION I can’t remember when
I became aware of the gender
pay gap. I can’t remember my
mum ever patting me on the
back and saying, “Go get ‘em
kid! Go get your almost equal
pay!”
Once it dawned on me—that
women struggled
to get paid the
same as their
male counter-
parts—I’m sure
I thought it was
unfair, but clearly
by then I’d seen
enough small in-
justices to not
be terribly sur-
prised. My grand-
mother forego-
ing me to give my cousin treats,
because “boys get their candy
first.” My mother and sister al-
ways clearing the table while
my brother and brother-in-law
stayed in their seats. The list goes
on, but I won’t bore you with it.
Last week the Icelandic par-
liament passed a bill that will,
as of January 2018, require com-
panies with 25 employees or
more to guarantee that male and
female employees receive the
same wages for the same work.

Where's the proof?
In a small company, it’s rare that
people have the same job—usu-
ally the little guy can only af-
ford one marketing manager,
say, or one accountant, one law-
yer, etc. That’s why
smaller business
are exempt from
this legislation.
But the big guns,
your Ikeas and
Price Waterhouse
Coopers, they have
to start proving
that they play fair.
If these compa-
nies fail to provide
proof of equal pay
they will be held accountable and
will have to pay fines and so on.
Politicians opposed to the
bill argued that there was al-
ready legislation in place that
stipulates workplaces can’t dis-
criminate based on gender, re-
ligion or age, so the government
didn’t need to intervene further.
It’s true that Iceland, like most
developed countries, does al-
ready have a law that says there
should be equal pay. But change
for the better isn’t inevitable.
Acknowledging that equality
should be mandatory is not the
same as making it mandatory.
And if change was inevi-
table, then we’d have equal pay
already—but in the forty-plus
years that Icelandic women have
been pushing for equal pay,
the gap hasn’t closed. Some-
times, you have to sit on the
suitcase to close it, you feel me?
Go get 'em, kid
Conservative MP Brynjar Níels-
son said that he had to swal-
low a lot of vomit and suffered
many sleepless nights before
Parliament voted on this bill.
We get it Brynjar, change is hard
and it’s not a perfect process.
I’m sure that many compa-
nies will figure out workarounds,
ways to undermine the bill and
continue paying women less
than men. Mid-sized companies
might struggle with trying to
make it work to start with, and
find it difficult to raise product
prices or cut into shareholder
dividends to ensure everyone is
getting the wage they deserve.
But in the long run, it will
pay off. So that when my daugh-
ter and yours grow up we can
say, “Go get ‘em kid! Go get
that equal pay!” and then they
can laugh in our faces and re-
main unappreciative and igno-
rant of our struggle to make the
world a fairer place for them.
18 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2017
“In the forty-
plus years that
Icelandic women
have been
pushing for equal
pay, the gap
hasn’t closed.”
Greedy greedy woman demanding money
Despite wage gap laws, there is still
much that needs to be protested
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