Flýtilyklar
Gender equality in Iceland
In May 2000, a new Act on Equal Status and Equal Rights of Women and Men was passed by the Icelandic Parliament, Althingi. This resulted in various structural changes. The official equality system is divided into three: The Equal Status Council, The Complaints Committee and the Centre for Gender Equality. The Centre is a national bureau and is in charge of administering the above mentioned act, as well as providing counselling and education in the field of gender equality, for the governmental and municipal authorities, institutions, companies, individuals and non-governmental organisations.
The ministry of social affairs is responsible for gender equality issues. Based on the Act on Equal Status and Equal Rights of Women and Men the minister of social affairs is responsible for designing and implementing a four year gender equality advancement plan which is to be a direct plan of actions and allocation of funds for equality advancement and which is to be evaluated at the end of each four year period.
When it comes to the status of gender equality in Iceland it can be pointed out that the country ranked number four on the 2006 Gender Gap Index (http://www.weforum.org). The Global Gender Gap Report 2006 covers all current and candidate European Union countries, 20 from Latin America and the Caribbean, over 20 from sub-Saharan Africa and 10 from the Arab world. Together, the 115 economies cover over 90% of the world’s population. The index mainly uses publicly available “hard data” indicators drawn from international organizations and some qualitative information from the Forum’s own Executive Opinion Survey.
Iceland did, like its neighbouring countries in Scandinavia, undergo a dramatic social change in the latter part of the 20th century. As regards men and women this change affected not the least the interplay between the labour market and the family life. Icelandic men have for decades been very active in the labour market with labour participation up to and around 90% for long periods. Until the nineteen sixties the women’s labour participation was often between 30-40% when it started to rise and reached almost eighty percent for both married and un-married women at the turn of the 21st century. Women’s labour participation in Iceland is thus amongst the highest in the world. The extensive preschool and day-care system built up by most municipalities is a major contributor to this. In year 2002 almost 90% of children aged 2-5 years had a place in preschools or in day-care provided mainly by municipalities.
There is however a clear difference between men and women in Iceland in many areas of life. Women still bear to a greater extent than do men, the responsibility on children and the home. Women work less hours in paid work with Icelandic men working on the average almost 47 hours in year 2003 compared to some 36 hours on the average for women. This to some extent due to the fact that women (42,1%) are much more likely than men (12,1%) to work part time. The development in labour participation and working hours point towards greater homogeneity between men and women in terms of relation to the labour market but there is however still a significant difference between men’s and women’s salaries and the workforce is still to a large extent divided between male and female types of jobs. In the year 1980 women’s yearly taxed income was on the average just under 50% of what men earned on a yearly basis. This is of course not taking into consideration different working hours and different types of jobs but this is however a fairly good indicator on the equality between men and women on the labour market. Some twenty years later or at the turn of the 21st century this figure was up to about 60%.
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