Six Years Later, Gender Equality Reality Falling Short Of The Law

Despite a law codifying a form of gender equality in management positions in Iceland, that still has yet to become a reality.

As reported, the law in question established that any company with more than 50 employees would have to have a management team that is at least 40% comprised of women. This law went into effect for public institutions in 2010, and for publicly traded companies in 2013.

As of 2019, this has yet to materialise, Statistics Iceland reports. However, there has been some improvement from previous years.

“In 2019, women were 34.7% of boards of directors in enterprises with 50 or more persons employed,” the report states in part. “This is a 1.1 percentage point increase from 2018. For comparison, women were 12.7% of boards of directors in 2007 and 9.5% in 1999. … The proportion of women as members of boards of directors in enterprises with fewer than 50 persons employed was 26.1% in 2019, which is a 0.2 percentage point increase from 2018.”

As such, while things are improving, the gender composition of management in companies who are under the purview of the law has yet to to be in harmony with the law.