Cold War for Women’s Rights in Iceland

Icelandic children are amazed when they see foreign presidents on television and discover they are men. They think presidents should be women.

President Vigdis Finnbogadottir, who in 1980 became the world’s first popularly elected woman head of state, tells the story to illustrate what her 13 years in office have meant for Icelandic women’s long struggle for equal rights.

“Women have gained quite a lot, particularly in self-confidence and the ambition to pursue an education,” she told correspondents at her home outside Reykjavik.

It comes as a surprise to foreigners that feminism seems to have come exceptionally far in Iceland, a country with a macho Viking heritage and an economy built on hardy fishermen braving year-round storms.

Iceland, with only 260,000 people, also has a female speaker of Parliament and a women’s party. The Women’s Alliance has been represented in the 63-member legislature since 1983. It currently holds six seats.

But Thorunn Sveinbjarnardottir, a leading figure in the Women’s Alliance, said:

“Don’t let appearances fool you. You see a woman president and a woman speaker of Parliament, mainly symbolic posts, and you see a women’s party which is more famous abroad than here. We’re far behind our sisters in the other Nordic countries.”

Icelandic legislation guarantees total equality between the sexes. About half of all university graduates are women and 90% of Icelandic women age 16 to 74 have their own income, an increase from about 20% in 1960.

Lara Juliusdottir, chairman of Iceland’s Equal Status Council, points to less impressive data.

Child care provision is limited. In Reykjavik, home to 150,000 people, full-time day care is reserved for the children of single parents and students. Many families cope only by calling on the services of grandma.

Women hold only 15 of the seats in Parliament, and only one of the 10 ministers named after the 1991 election was a woman.

Juliusdottir contrasts Iceland with Norway, where the three main political parties are led by women, and with Sweden, where paid maternity leave is 15 months to Iceland’s six.

The Icelandic labor market is to a large extent segregated. Most women work in lower-paid jobs in the service sector, in commerce and in trade, and many work part-time.

Juliusdottir said that even when taking all factors into consideration, there are unexplained gender-related income differences of about 10%.

It is often the woman who puts in an extra shift of cooking, cleaning and child-minding at the end of the working day.

“Equal responsibility at home is a phrase we often use but seldom practice,” Juliusdottir said.

Foreign Minister Jon Baldvin Hannibalsson, a dashing bearded man who in the eyes of many Icelanders is the embodiment of male power, said women’s rights were already provided for.

“This country has always been run by women. I’m more worried about men’s rights when I look ahead to the next century.”

But a six-year recession caused by lower cod catches, accompanied by a rise in unemployment to 3.2%, threatens to push women’s issues into the background.

Gerdur Steinthorsdottir helped organize a one-day women’s strike in 1976 which in which 25,000 people took part and which inspired the fight for equal rights.

“We were very optimistic in the 1970s, but now the future is as unpredictable as the Icelandic weather,” she said. “There could be sun tomorrow--or a gale.”