With 47.6% of the seats that will now be occupied by women in the new Parliament, Iceland broke the European record on Saturday September 25, during the legislative elections held in the country.
This result, still provisional, ranks the Nordic country ahead of Sweden and Finland, which have 47% and 46% respectively of women among parliamentarians.
In the rest of the world, only three countries - Rwanda, Cuba and Nicaragua - have a female majority in their parliaments, while Mexico and the United Arab Emirates have strict parity, according to data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union.
The right to vote since 1882
"This is not a new phenomenon in Iceland. Icelandic women were already numerous in Parliament. They never had the majority but in the previous elections, they were 24 out of 63 deputies [38%]", explains Michel Sallé, author of "The History of Iceland. From the origins to the present day" (ed. Tallandier, 2018).
"There is all the same a system of quotas on the lists of candidates, strictly equal, which allowed women to impose themselves in politics. It is still necessary to reserve them a place of choice on this list."
From this point of view, explains the specialist of Iceland, one of the three parties of the ruling coalition, the Independence Party, "which passes for a conservative and macho party", has been trying for a few years " to rejuvenate and give more space to women ".
For the rest, Iceland occupies a unique place in the history of feminism.
Icelandic women were among the first women in the world to win the right to vote in the 1882 local elections, with founding feminist figures such as Bríet Bjarnhéðinsdóttir, a farmer who became a journalist and Reykjavik city councilor from the start of the 20th century.
Regarding the legislative elections, it was not until 1913 that Icelanders could vote.
The first female head of state in 1980
Iceland is also the first nation to elect a woman head of state in 1980. "Vigdís Finnbogadóttir has remained a role model for all men and women in Iceland. Although the post of president does not come with real powers. , Icelanders are deeply nationalists and attach great importance to the presidential figure, ”says Michel Sallé.
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir opened the way between 1980 and 1996. A few years later, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, appointed Prime Minister in 2009, would follow in the midst of the financial crisis. "A crisis caused by bankers, mainly men," notes Michel Sallé. The Icelanders, then on the brink, are losing their savings and their jobs by the thousands. They accuse the outgoing Prime Minister Geir Haarde and his childhood friend, the governor of the Central Bank, Davíð Oddsson. In the midst of the debacle, women are called to the rescue at the head of the government, but also of the two main nationalized Icelandic banks.
As Prime Minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir is a pioneer not only because she heads the government, but also because she is openly homosexual.
She will be the first female leader in the world to marry a person of the same sex.
"A whole generation of Icelanders are growing up with these benchmarks" and in 2017, the current Prime Minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir (environmental left), becomes the second woman to lead the country.
Deemed "honest and modest" in a country shaken by the new financial scandal of the Panama Papers, it makes women's rights one of the main axes of its policy.
Always a glass ceiling
A year later, Iceland becomes the first country in the world where pay inequalities between women and men are illegal.
A pay equity law punishes companies with more than 25 employees in the event of a pay gap.
The island of 300,000 inhabitants regularly finds itself at the top of the World Economic Forum's ranking in terms of gender equality, far ahead of France, in sixteenth position in the 2021 report. high (83% in 2019 according to Eurostat).
This success can be attributed in particular to birth support measures.
The country has one of the best childcare policies among rich countries, according to a Unicef report.
"Under the government of Katrín Jakobsdóttir, there was an extension of maternity leave to one year and it must be taken in part by the spouse", underlines Michel Sallé.
Despite all these advances in the field of gender equality, "there is still a glass ceiling", warns the researcher.
"Differences in wages with men have persisted because women still occupy less important positions in companies."
An issue that Katrín Jakobsdóttir had promised to tackle, who said she wanted to question the "values" that make women overrepresented in lower paid jobs, such as nurses or caregivers. elderly.
She won't have had time to do it.
The right is in a strong position, making an extension of Katrín Jakobsdóttir's mandate unlikely.
It is now the newly elected parliament that will have to tackle this challenge after the appointment of a new prime minister to head Iceland.
With AFP
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