Ávarp Katrínar Jakobsdóttur forsætisráðherra á viðburði í tilefni Alþjóðlega jafnlaunadagsins í New York 18. september 2023

Excellencies, dear guests.

The gender pay gap remains one of the biggest obstacles to achieving gender equality, in Iceland as well as globally.

When we discuss the gender pay gap we must keep in mind that equal pay is so much more than just the paycheck. Equal pay and economic independence are the keys to women’s liberation and important factors in our work toward eliminating all forms of violence against women and girls. 

Iceland has been at the top of the World Economic Forum‘s index for gender equality for the last fourteen years and is the only country to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap.

This is among other things due to women‘s equal political participation, high level of education, equal division of parental leave for both parents, universal daycare and preschools for all children, and, equal access to health care. But gender equality in Iceland has not happened on its own. We have a long history of women who have fought for every step in gender equality. Despite this we still have a gender pay gap to close.

Gender equality in general has always been high on the political agenda in my government. One of our actions has been to tackle gender-based wage discrimination. In 2018 a Law on Equal Pay Certification took effect, requiring companies and institutions to undergo an audit to ensure that they offer equal pay for work of equal value.

Research conducted by Statistic Iceland in collaboration with the Prime Ministers Office, published in 2021, shows that the gender pay gap is gradually and slowly diminishing. The research also shows that the remaining unadjusted gender pay gap in Iceland is largely explained by the gender segregation of the labor market.

To deal with this we must do a comprehensive study of, and reckon with, how jobs and work in our society are valued. It has always been the case that sectors that happen to be women-dominated are not valued as highly economically as other jobs. The field of care work, caretaking within the healthcare system, and children´s education, largely women-dominated professions, are not valued as highly as technical jobs or jobs in the financial sector.  And though we´ve always known this, the Covid-19 pandemic starkly showed us how important these women-dominated fields are, how they are the foundation for everything else, and how our societies run to a halt without them functioning properly.

Women also tend to leave the labor force earlier than men, relying on early retirement, rehabilitation, or disability benefits.

This is not least true for women who work in care and education, emotionally and physically demanding jobs that are becoming more complex by the day. This negatively affects their health, income, career development, and future pensions. It is interesting to note here that care work has actually been defined as one of the areas that artificial intelligence will struggle to take over, especially the emotionally charged labor associated with paid and unpaid care.

Ensuring a gender balance in employment is essential for women's financial independence and, therefore, a key element in ending gender inequalities.

To tackle this undervaluation of women-dominated fields, my government is paying special attention to this wage gap and I have appointed an action group with the mandate to eliminate the gender pay gap that is explained by the gender-segregated labor market and the systematic undervaluation of traditional women's jobs.

What we are doing here is shifting the focus from equal pay to pay equity and by that, we compare not only the same or similar jobs but different jobs that require the same or similar level of skill, responsibility, and effort.

Dear guests.

Another important aspect related to the topic of equal pay is time use. How do we spend our time outside the workplace and how does this affect the genders in different ways? Here we have to look into the time used on household jobs but also the invisible workload- the mental load that is sometimes called the “third shift”.

My government has in collaboration with Statistics Iceland launched a time-use survey to get detailed information on time use. The goal is to estimate the scope of unpaid work in the household and how these tasks are divided between the genders.

Research points to the fact that women perform more household and care work than men and this affects women's position on the labor market and their employment. We do know that women are more likely to be part-time workers and much less likely to be in senior management and this also has an impact on the gender pay gap.

This gendered division of labor also promotes gender stereotypes and outdated beliefs about women's capabilities and roles in society.

The gender pay gap not only affects women but also damages our society's economic growth. When we underutilize the potential of half the population, we miss out on valuable skills and ideas that could drive innovation and progress.

The ultimate goal we all strive to attain is an equal and inclusive world of work in which all genders receive equal pay for work of equal value, in which all genders have equal opportunities in the labor market and where all genders fully participate in unpaid work such as household duties. Full equality will not be reached until we close the gender pay gap. And even then we also have to stay alert and guard our rights as we are too well aware of the fact that human rights seem to be easier to erase than to obtain. This is a hugely important task we must all work on together.

Thank you and I wish you a fruitful discussion.