Back in March, Iceland introduced legislation that made it illegal to pay men more than women for the same job. With the start of the New Year, the new law has gone into effect, per Al Jazeera. Now, the island Nordic country is the first in the world to legally require all companies with 25 employees or more to prove that they pay women and men equally. Companies will have to undergo certification every three years to ensure that their pay policies follow the rules. Those that fail to prove pay parity will face fines.
The Iceland law is unique in that it requires employers to verify that they pay people fairly. In the United States, for instance, it’s already technically illegal for a companies to discriminate based on gender, but pay equity is not enforced in a meaningful way. That’s why women who work full-time, year round, on average still make just 80% of what men do—and the gender pay gap hasn’t closed in any significant way in nine years.
So what do you say, ladies, shall we all move to Iceland? Not only does it now require equal pay, but it also ranks first on the World Economic Forum’s 2015 global gender gap index, followed by fellow Nordic nations Norway, Finland, and Sweden. Plus: saunas.
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