Iceland just made it illegal for companies to pay men more than women for the same job

In empowering news of the day, Iceland passed legislation to ensure men and women are paid equally for the same job. Though they announced plans for the new law back in March of 2017, the policy went into effect yesterday, January 1st.

The legislation requires that any private company or government office with more than 25 employees must obtain government certification proving that they pay their employees equally for the same jobs, regardless of gender. Companies that fail to prove pay equality will face fines.

Dagny Osk Aradottir Pind, a board member of the Icelandic Women's Rights Association, told Al Jazeera, "It's a mechanism to ensure women and men are being paid equally. We have had legislation saying that pay should be equal for men and women for decades now, but we still have a pay gap."

Also according to Al Jazeera, Iceland’s parliament consists of almost 50% female members, and the nation has ranked number one in terms of gender equality for the past nine years in a row (the United States, meanwhile, has ranked 49th).

Iceland just made it illegal for men to be paid more than women for doing the same work. pic.twitter.com/I2ut3vvmEs

— AJ+ (@ajplus) January 2, 2018

“I think that now people are starting to realize that this is a systematic problem that we have to tackle with new methods,” Aradottir Pind continued. “Women have been talking about this for decades and I really feel that we have managed to raise awareness, and we have managed to get to the point that people realise that the legislation we have had in place is not working, and we need to do something more.”

Iceland hopes to eradicate their gender pay gap by 2022. We hope the rest of the world is taking note.