Oral intervention by Dr. Sibylle von Heydebrand at the UN Geneva

Dr Sibylle von Heydebrand at the Global Leaders Forum on economic opportunities for women

Globalization, technology and changes in trade policy are driving transformations in global value chains, impacting women in many ways.

In terms of the impact on women’s economic opportunities and employment, the transformation of global value chains is essentially creating numerous jobs for women and giving them the opportunity to develop their skills, leading to better employment opportunities and career advancement.

However, women in global value chains are often employed in low-skilled and low-paid positions, which reinforces gender inequality.

This brings us to the question of how we can improve women’s economic opportunities in the context of the transformation of global value chains.

The education of women and girls plays a crucial role in this process of improvement:

We need investment in women’s education and training.

We need to pay the necessary attention to girls’ education. In developing countries, for example, one in three girls do not complete elementary school, mostly because they spend eight times as long doing housework. As a result, almost twice as many girls as boys can neither read nor write.

Empowering women to participate in global value chains through improved education can not only increase economic opportunities for women, but also strengthen the economic power of the country as a whole. It also challenges traditional gender roles, which can contribute to a change in social norms and promote greater gender equality.

Global Leaders Forum on the 60th anniversary of UN Trade and Development UNCTAD

Under the title “Charting a New Development Course in a Changing World” the Global Leaders Forum took place from June 12-14, 2024 at the United Nations in Geneva and included dialogues with leading politicians, panel discussions and spotlight contributions.

It was opened by the UN Secretary-General and featured a program with high-level participation from heads of state, heads of institutions and leading economists and experts who engaged in debates on innovative approaches to tackling the challenges of sustainable development and strengthening UNCTAD’s role and influence.

The second day of the forum included a panel on “reshaping foreign direct investment and global value chains for development”. At this panel, the International Alliance of Women was one of two civil society organizations given the opportunity to speak in an oral intervention from the floor.

In the sixty years since UNCTAD was founded, the world economy has seen the rise of the Global South, a huge digital economy and a significant reduction in poverty and hunger. However, inequalities have increased, economic cycles have become more volatile and the threat of climate disasters has intensified. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the failure to recover inclusively, increase poverty and reduce Human Development Index scores.

UNCTAD was founded with the express goal ensuring that globalization leaves no one behind. Sixty years later, accomplishing this task requires a profound paradigm shift – in how we harness technology, how we finance trade and prepare for a global race for climate action, how we define and measure progress, and how we adapt and transform ourselves to meet and lead a changing world order.

Geneva, June 2024

Dr Sibylle von Heydebrand
IAW’s Main Representative to the UN Geneva
Representative of the IAW at the 60th anniversary of the UN Trade and Development UNCTAD

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Natalia Fischer
Fair Fashion Enthusiast
wearing her leased dress from unown fashion

The picture on top of the page shows a textile factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Photo by NaZemi, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Commons Photo Credit: Source

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November 24-26, 2020

“CARING ECONOMY: PUTTING PEOPLE OVER PROFITS”

The theme of the 38th Congress suitably reflects the yearning of IAW membership globally, that is, putting people’s rights and needs over profit -towards a systematic change to a caring economy. In this wise, State budgets, recovery and stimulus programs, financial instruments must all provide adequate funding for gender equality projects and aim for the promotion of human rights, peace, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the cessation of climate change expeditiously.

IAW welcomes participants from various parts of the globe to its 2020 virtual Congress, which is its most important membership meeting triennially. Congress will, amongst others, deliberate on resolutions on Caring Economy and Unpaid Work; ILO Convention 189 Concerning Decent Work for Domestic Workers; Fund Healthcare not Welfare; Family Planning and Reproductive Rights. Elections will be held to usher in a new leadership for the next triennium and vital decisions taken on the IAW Action Programme, its advocacy, future projects and the admission of a number of new member organizations.

It is trite knowledge that the COVID-19 pandemic, wars, increase of inequalities and various forms of violence against women has hit women’s and girl’s rights, needs, health and economical status extremely hard globally. Persistent women’s rights violations now constitute a gnawing, universal predicament. Consequently, it is crucial at this time that IAW and aligned partners make women’s voices heard and ensure their equal participation in all endeavors of life in the International Community.

This is the first-ever virtual IAW Congress in its 116 years of existence. The Alliance, as one of the oldest women’s rights Non-Governmental Organizations, is well aware that at such precarious times as this, we must all intensify efforts towards the attainment of our noble objectives.  To this end, IAW genially embraces the new digital technological advancements in its management of current global challenges.

Joanna Manganara
President

Olufunmi Oluyede
Secretary General

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By Meenakshi Kumar

Presented at the International Meeting in Geneva

Women are the engines of an economy, but their contribution is completely ignored. Only the efforts of women who are part of paid employment is counted for their economic participation, but what about the hardworking women who care for family members without getting paid.

The invisibility of women workers is appalling because their work is essential to the survival of society and provides a huge and unnoticed subsidy to the “formal” economy. It is also inefficient and unjust, adding significantly to the relational inequalities that are so entrenched in our society. It disempowers even paid women workers as what women do is undervalued or rather not even put in the category of work; hence household chores form part of the responsibility of even paid women workers putting a double burden on them thereby reducing their efficiency. This contributes to large gender gaps in wages. And it allows policymakers to forget about the conditions of hundreds of millions of workers on whom the entire economy depends.

It is a lack of monetary income which is a source of weakness and vulnerability in women. Lack of financial independence also leads to continued violence against women making them commit suicide.

India accounts for 37 per cent of women’s suicides globally. The Lancet Public Health Journal has reported that single, divorced and widowed women are less likely to commit suicide because marriage offers no protection against it. According to Lancet, arranged and early marriages and motherhood, low social status, and lack of economic independence also lead young women (between ages of 15 to 39) to commit suicide.

Even in the largest companies, less than one tenth of the employees are women. Being forced to be homemakers with rising household incomes, they are cut off from the outside world and get depressed, especially with abusive husbands and unable to stand up to continuous mental torture — women commit suicide.

The lack of childcare is a major constraint on women’s economic participation, given the division of labour within households. Adequate, affordable and reliable childcare is an issue for women working in all sectors. Care services for disabled, ill and elderly is also important to women’s participation. Requiring employers to bear the costs of childcare could be seen as introducing new barriers to equal opportunities, as it can result in women being seen to be more expensive workers than men.

Although many countries have undertaken efforts towards childcare activities, the conclusion of the 2005 review done by the UN Millennium Project was that “not one country provides the investment in care services that is required to fully meet the needs of women and their children.

So, what happens is not a decline in women’s work participation, but a shift from recognised work to unpaid work.  This is a dispiriting shift because it is also typically associated with women’s and girls’ loss of agency and bargaining power within the family. It is also typically not voluntary: most of the women surveyed responded that they did such work because there was no one else in the household available to do it.

Measures to enhance women’s participation in labour market

Support for labour market re-entry – Women taking a break from employment due to family compulsions should be facilitated to have access back to it at the same level and with the same remuneration had she not to take a break. And the employers plea that the employees absence from work results in reduced efficiency, in any way, then there can be skill up gradation by the employer by making women employees undergo short training programmes so that they catch up with the workforce, This will also provide savings to companies on recruitment.;hence more efficient use of talent in the workforce.

Developing skill acquisition and training – both pre-employment and while employed, to increase women’s access to more rewarding areas of employment. This requires measures related to training and retraining, but also complementary approaches to enable women to find and keep jobs in which they can use the skills gained.

Assistance with family responsibilities by encouraging and complementing employer measures to enable workers to handle family responsibilities, such as childcare and paternity leave to encourage men.

Entrepreneurship training for women – Digital technology can be a great enabler for increasing women’s capability and capacity. The digital technology offers great opportunity to leverage time resources and women can be trained in digital capability to make its use in their own comfortable space by leveraging available time; hence coping with the competing demands of work and family responsibilities.

Promoting women entrepreneurs- Women entrepreneurs find it difficult to raise funds. They should be encouraged and given easier access to loans. Skill training has to be given to rural women to increase their capacity to earn incomes. Otherwise, a lot of talent will be lost which could contribute to the economic growth of the country and enhance the welfare of the people.

National governments role is important as they can take action in a wide range of areas.

1. a) They can bring employment legislation into conformity with international norms on non-   discrimination, equal pay, workers with family responsibilities, and maternity leave.
2. b) Support innovative approaches to making childcare available and affordable for working parents;
3. c) Advocate family-friendly practices by employers.
4. d) Information campaigns, and guidance on good practices with respect to leave, hours, flexibility, and advocate the use of provisions for family responsibility by men as well as
5. e) Incorporate gender perspectives to the development or review of social security and pensions programs; and improve the quality, dissemination and use of data on women’s economic participation and
6. f) Facilitate policies that address the constraints faced by women due to child and family care responsibilities that are a major constraint for women.
7. g) Increased education and training for women in non-traditional subjects.

To conclude I would like to add that in the era of globalization, the role of women at home and work has taken a multifaceted dimension. The economies should recognise the contribution made by women with full appreciation.

A very encouraging step taken by NSSO (National Sample Survey Office) in India is that household chores will be considered as part of economy boosting work.

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Progressing with our feminist goals through alternative narratives that will allow us to fight effectively against women’s human rights’ violations.

Today it is 25 years since the Beijing Platform for Action was adopted. The Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing took place at a moment of great global optimism when a new world order of cooperation was emerging after the end of the cold war, the dismantling of Apartheid and the emergence of new democracies.

The question to be asked is whether there has been any progress concerning gender equality and women’s human rights. The answer is yes, many advances have been reported around the world. However, the results are very unevenly spread across countries. So, progress has been variable and slow.

Many of the gains that women and girls have made are now under threat. Women are attacked for trying to enjoy their rights to education, are raped and turned into sex slaves, while they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and illiterate. Moreover, in conflict situations we continue to see atrocities that transform the bodies of women into battlegrounds for warriors.

What are the reasons for this backlash? An international environment that is not conducive to the realization of human rights, in particular women’s human rights.

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, its processes and their impact on Women’s empowerment.

Before examining the challenges in the external environment, we have to look into the United Nations system, in particular the Commission on the Status of Women, and whether it has delivered progress for women and girls.

We have to examine what has to change in the Commission on the Status of Women to make it a positive force for women’s rights.

The active participation of Non-Governmental Organizations is a critical element of the work of the Commission. Yet the Commission on the Status of Women does not institutionalize consultations with women’s Non-Governmental Organizations that possess first-hand knowledge around what women need and are critical of their state’s progress.

The state-centric process followed by the Commission on the Status of Women best represents state representatives of women and limits women’s Non- Governmental Organizations to the Non-Governmental Organization’s Forum rather than giving them voice to deliberate as equals at official proceedings.

The United Nations should devise effective mechanisms of consultation with civil society organizations before the sessions of the Commission on the Status of Women and elsewhere. Feminist organizations should hold the Commission of the Status of Women accountable for the systematic participation of women in its processes.

Fundamentally, we need a new way of thinking. We need to effect a change in our global culture whereby United Nations member states will be convinced to acknowledge the value of the input and constructive criticisms of civil society.

Global challenges to gender equality, women’s human rights and the empowerment of women.

There are a lot of global challenges we have to face in the external environment like neoliberal policies, fundamentalisms, increased numbers of refugees and displaced persons, climate change, poverty and violence, populism, the shrinking space for civil society, an emerging movement against gender ideology and many others.

The greatest challenge we have to deal with is neoliberal policies. Neoliberal capitalism is a key driver of the current global crisis. Its core positions are a free market and profits, above people and the planet. Patriarchal structures are central to its current functions.

Neoliberal capitalism in its pursuit of profit has caused ecological devastation, underdevelopment, violence and repression through deepening authoritarianism worldwide.

It has provoked a dramatic increase in income inequalities across the world and a backlash against social and political gains resulting in an increase of systematic attacks on human rights in general and women’s and vulnerable groups in particular by regressive forces that are coming to power in many parts of the world.

What can we do? Time has come to develop counter strategies from a feminist perspective.

Feminist organizations should transform neoliberal policies by using feminist economics. We have to rethink the very concept of the economy, if we want to make economic policies more gender equal. To begin with the economy should focus on well-being instead of competitiveness.

We need a new concept to bring care and unpaid care into the heart of the understanding of the economy. Care economy is one such concept, reproductive economy is another one. We should consider both as integral parts of the economy.

Feminist organizations should elaborate a gendered analysis of climate change, which is not just about collecting gender disaggregated data showing that the impact on men and women is different. Neither is the solution to simply ensure that equal numbers of men and women participate in climate change decision making. It is about including the knowledge and voices of women and men in designing effective responses to climate change. It is not just about women. It is about gender relations and how to change them.

Globalization and neoliberal policies have contributed to the growing influence and power of non-state actors such as business, financial institutions, corporations, over states and societies.

Today, corporate lobbying and interference in everyday governmental affairs is so significant, that it threatens the fundamental value of society namely, that the will of the people must be the basis for governments.

Transnational corporations exploit ideas of feminism and gender equality to improve their image in some countries, while systematically abusing women’s human rights in other parts of the world.

Women’s empowerment, once a radical feminist idea of transforming society, has been manipulated and reduced to an individualistic focus on self-esteem, entrepreneurship and consumerism.

Feminist organizations should support the elaboration, by the open-ended working group created by the United Nations Human Rights Council on 26 June 2014, of an internationally legally binding instrument to regulate within international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business in respect to human rights.

A very important aspect of our efforts to deal with global challenges has to do with power.  We have to gain and retain power by transforming power relations between women and men which are anchored in patriarchy.

We know from research findings that women’s substantive participation in peace processes increases the potential for these processes to succeed. The reasons are that women in their negotiations include broader issues than power in order to build a sustainable peaceful society. We need to systematically listen to them and learn from their leadership.

A deep concern is the rise of the concept of gender ideology. Right wing and reactionary forces fought against this concept as a social construct in Beijing. However, nowadays they are gaining ground amid the resurgence of conservatism and fundamentalism.

In recent years, the rise of right wing and nationalist populism across the world has led to an increasing number of governments implementing repressive measures against the space for civil society.

One way through which women’s and girls’ voices are silenced is through that shrinking space. Moreover, without the active input of women and girls we cannot advance and repeal the backlash against women’s human rights and make governments accountable.

Neoliberal policies have exacerbated violence, although we have seen an unprecedented level of awareness globally due to the mobilization of women survivors of different forms of violence. Violence has persisted and deepened as the structural issues related to women’s oppression have not been seriously addressed.

The same is the case with poverty. Policies elaborated by governments to reduce it have failed as they did not address structural inequalities neither the social and economic barriers that lie on the route to poverty. Women constitute half of the poor population globally.

In order to deal with the exacerbation of the above phenomena of poverty, violence, the shrinking space for civil society, climate change, power relations anchored in patriarchy, growing influence of corporations, the implementation of repressive measures by governments and the rise of the concept of gender ideology, all due to neoliberal policies, we should try to align these policies with international human rights law and promote the rights of the traditionally marginalized. Feminist organizations should report anti-rights organizations, hold them to account and build alliances with progressive policy makers/politicians.

The future we want: Our vision.

The alarming rise of all the challenges we have referred to can also be dealt with by revitalizing the conviction that multilateralism is the key to working together through global problems solving. We should also promote and lobby for a more democratic version of it in which citizens are enabled to have more agency and voice.

What is also alarming is the fact that member states continue to pay lip service to the principle of ‘leave no one behind’. So, there is lack of political will from member countries to make the Sustainable Development Goals meaningful, including Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality. There is also a general lack of political will to change development models to ones that prioritize people over profits.

2020 will be a crucial year for reaffirming, taking stock and moving forward the Beijing Platform for Action and the Sustainable Development Goals.

We should plan and propose an alternative Agenda and program of Action based on answers to a number of questions such as: How has the 1995 agenda been realized?  What remains to be done? What are the new ideas on feminist agendas in 2020? What kind of new ideas do we need for the future?

In our view we must elaborate on this alternative Agenda in which equality does not mean just women’s issues. There is a need to move beyond binaries. Our strategies to resist the backlash on human/women’s rights should take into account not only gender inequality but other inequalities as well. We have to accept the interconnected nature of inequalities.

Intersectionality recognizes that people can experience multiple oppressions which intersect in powerful ways.

How do we make sure that this new alternative Agenda is inclusive and addresses and challenges global issues as they impact the rights and position of women in different countries?

The answer to that will depend on whether an alternative narrative of our feminist goals can be built on the basis of our Agenda that will allow us to bring regressive forces to a halt. For that we need allies to support us.  Alliances with other like-minded organizations are likely to be especially necessary in difficult times. Mobilizing to have an impact, we must make advances firmly grounded in institutional frameworks and norms.

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The 2030 agenda recognizes the crucial importance of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls in sustainable development (goal5) as essential for achieving all the interconnected goals ant targets.

One way of doing that is by using infrastructure as a driver for change to improve women’s lives by reducing the demands of household and care work, increase the productivity of their enterprises and enable them to move into better jobs or more profitable markets.

Infrastructure consists of high cost investments that if done well can raise economic growth, productivity and land values and contribute to poverty reduction.

Women’s economic empowerment is about economic equality such as closing the gender pay gap, increasing job opportunities etc. But it is also about breaking down barriers that hold women back: from discrimination laws to unfair share of home and family care.

Empirical evidence on women’s time allocation shows clearly that women bear the brunt of domestic tasks processing food crops, providing water and firewood and caring for children.

How can infrastructure enable women’s economic empowerment? Infrastructure provisions can reduce the time women spend on domestic tasks and free up time for productive economic activity.

For example, mobility improvements in transportation infrastructure can have significant effects on women’s physical mobility leading to higher paid jobs for women and new opportunities for business expansion.

Moreover the construction of new transport, ICT and energy facilities can create new job opportunities as for example jobs for women in the transport sector taking on roles as bus drivers, ticket collectors and taxi drivers or in the construction business which increasingly involves women as constructors, semi-skilled and skilled workers, supervisor engineers.  However, in this context women have to break through gender barriers and enter traditionally male dominated sectors.

Unsafe market spaces, transport and public spaces expose women workers and traders to gender based violence and limit their economic opportunities. The perceived and the actual risk of gender based violence have a significant impact on women’s economic participation. Road, rail and port projects can do their part to narrow the gender gap by featuring well lit roads, women only carriages and resting and waiting areas.

It is important to note that infrastructure investment by itself does not result in inclusive growth. The quality and cost of access to services are critical to the potential of these investments to impact low income and marginalized groups whose members are disproportionately women.

We also have to note that most infrastructure is gender blind thus empowering men and reinforcing women’ s role as one which is primarily with household tasks.

In order to engender infrastructure projects women need to be part of the decision making in all phases of these projects. Giving them a voice will help to reduce gender inequality.

Women are usually at the household nexus of water, food and energy and they often know first hand about the challenges and potential solutions in these areas.  So, women are the most convincing advocates for the solutions they need so they should be at the forefront of decision making in sustainable development.  A precondition for engendering infrastructure projects is to amplify women’s collective voice to demand access and use infrastructure and services.

The process of demanding improvements in infrastructure by low income women especially in urban areas can by itself be empowering. This is a key strategy and precondition for engendering infrastructure which can have potentially transformative impacts. At the global level we have a number of women led community driven demands by networks of urban poor that have been very successful in negotiating collectively with municipal authorities for improved infrastructure. They have also transformed women’s involvement in municipal government processes.

We should also monitor the gender outcomes of infrastructure projects and build a database for successful gender approaches that can be replicated or scaled up. We should also elaborate and adopt outcome indicators such as income change for female workers etc.

Unfortunately, most infrastructure is seen to help women deliver outcomes that benefit their family, community and state rather than address their own individual needs. In other words, gender remains framed within an economic empowerment approach where women’s work matters not for women themselves but for their ability to participate in markets. This is a pro market approach that we should reject in favour of an approach that is based on the human rights of women.

So, an important precondition for engendering infrastructure projects and facilitating access to and use of them by women is the adoption of a strategy aiming at challenging social norms that are based on gender stereotypes and influence women’s ability to access and use infrastructural resources at all levels.

Another obstacle to engendering infrastructure projects is the fact that this sector is usually run by people that have technical expertise and are unfamiliar and not sensitive to gender equality or the tools used by gender equality specialists. States should undertake efforts to reconcile the two approaches.

Another constrain to effective mainstreaming has to do with traditional practices like child marriage that perpetuate disparities and violate human rights. Very often the practices of child marriage continue in many countries because there is no capacity of the state to deal with it by employing social workers and elaborating policies to deal with gender based discrimination as well as proceed with structural changes to end this harmful practice. The states should also try to demystify all myths and cultural beliefs surrounding traditional practices.

Finally, the most important question to be asked is whether it is possible to use infrastructure as driver for change as long as neoliberal policies dominate in parts of the world. When subsidies are cut from poor and marginalized groups in rural and urban areas, when funding for social services and social infrastructure especially education and health services are cut, then we should question whether neoliberal approaches to development policies can bring about change. We should also question, whether infrastructure provisions that free up time of women in the developing world for labour force participation in the formal sector is a step forward in empowering these women.

Numerous evidence based on research demonstrates how markets themselves seem to be structured to perpetuate and exploit economic inequality. This model relies heavily on women’s wage labour, especially low wage work in service and manufacturing. The reality that underlines this new model is depressed wage levels, decreased job security, declining living standards, steep rise in the number of hours worked for wages, exacerbation of the double shift and rising poverty increasingly concentrated on female headed households.

How can this process represent empowerment for women? Governments, the private sector, women’s NGOs and feminist groups should work for a new development model that prioritizes people over profits. Equal societies do better on just about every available metric: health, crime rates, education etc.

Recommendations:

Governments should:

• Implement infrastructure projects to reduce the time women spend on domestic tasks and free up time for productive economic activity.
• Implement infrastructure projects that create new job opportunities and that protect women workers and traders from gender based violence.
• Engender infrastructure projects by having women participate in the decision making process in all phases of them.
• Monitor gender outcomes of infrastructure projects and adopt and implement relevant indicators.
• Elaborate infrastructure projects that look after women’s unique needs and experiences.
• Implement strategies aiming at challenging social norms that are based on gender stereotypes and influence women’s access and use of infrastructural resources.

Finally Governments, the Private sector, Women’s NGOs and Feminist groups should work for developmental policies that prioritize people over profits.

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This statement is submitted by Women’s Federation for World Peace International, together with Graduate Women International, Soroptimist International, International Alliance of Women, International Federation of Business and Professional Women, Pan Pacific and Southeast Asia Women’s Association of Thailand, Tandem Project, Mother’s Legacy Project; international NGO’s all committed the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. These goals hold little hope of success if more dramatic measures are not taken to advance opportunities for women and girls as movers and leaders in society – and importantly, their economic empowerment and access to education and knowledge.

Trade provides tremendous potential towards growth and prosperity. However, unethical trade, trade which does not respect the parameters laid down by international frameworks and conventions, can and is having a negative impact on human rights, and especially on women’s rights. Women and marginalised or excluded communities, as consumers, workers or entrepreneurs, are disproportionately affected by unethical trade and policies which do not respect the criteria on which they were established.

In global trade negotiations, WTO, Bilateral trade agreements, FTAs, GSP, EBA, GSP+ etc , marginalised communities, the informal sector and women’s voices are often excluded from policy-negotiations, and even from impact assessments or safe-guard clauses. This leaves women and those at risk from poverty without any protection or livelihood security and continues the demise of women’s rights in general.

Furthermore, most countries now focus their trade policy on liberalisation and open-markets, assuming these macroeconomic policies are “gender neutral.” However, experts and activists, such as the Women’s Economic and Social Think Tank (WESTT) have warned that failing to recognise, and work to address, the disproportionate affect of trade liberalisation policies on women could have lasting effects on economies, and on society as a whole. Trade benefit programs that are currently in place must be effectively implemented so as to best serve disenfranchised groups. As well, international conventions on women’s rights, such as CEDAW must be respected in all trade agreements.

Recommendations

1. CEDAW must be respected and implemented by all countries in all trade negotiations. Immediate suspension of trade agreements, trade subsidies or preferential tariffs must be enforced where CEDAW is not being respected or implemented.
2. UN and ILO conventions on equal treatment, decent work and equal pay for equal work, must be implemented and countries who fail to comply with, or report, on such Conventions should have their trade agreements suspended ahead of an investigation into breaches of the Convention.
3. Trade policy is not gender neutral and women must be included equally in all trade discussions, especially as trade imbalances disproportionately affect the informal sector where women are mainly employed and self-employed.

HRC39 Statement_ Women and Trade Policy (2)

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The law mandates employers to undergo equal pay certification using the Equal Pay Standard, an equal pay management system developed in Iceland. The law took effect on January 1st 2018 and all employers are required to have undergone their first certification by the end of 2021, and then renew their certification every three years. Employers who fail to undergo the equal pay certification are faced with daily fines.

Equal Pay Legislation for Over 50 Years
Iceland has had legislation supposed to guarantee equal pay for men and women for a very long time. In fact, we passed the first legislation mandating equal pay for men and women in Iceland over half a century ago, in 1961. At the time, the members of Alþingi were hopeful that full pay equality would be reached in only six years, in 1967. Perhaps a naive hope, but then again, what can we expect from a legislative body which at the time had only two women members.

Unfortunately, economic gender equality was not reached in six years. So we in Iceland passed a new comprehensive Equality Act in 1976, and one of the articles stated that women and men be paid the same for work of equal value. Alþingi passed yet another updated Equality Act in 2008 with the same provision that men and women be paid equally for equal work. Still, men are still paid more than women, despite legislation which is supposed to guarantee equal wages.

The legislation which took effect in Iceland this year requires companies to prove that they are paying men and women equally, by obtaining an equal pay certification using the Equal Pay Standard. The current coalition government has affirmed its commitment to the equal pay certification, stating in its Agreement: “Deliberate steps will be taken to eradicate gender-based wage discrimination. For this purpose, it will be necessary, amongst other things, to publicise the gender pay-gap more prominently, e.g. in companies’ annual financial statements. It must be ensured that comparable jobs are evaluated in a comparable manner, in accordance with the demands that are made of enterprises according to law and that are supposed to be reflected in the new Equal Pay Standard.”

Requiring companies to undergo certification based on the Equal Pay Standard is a logical next step in our efforts in Iceland to combat gender inequality and the gender pay gap. In current Icelandic law, companies with 25 or more employees are already required to have a gender equality action plan and boards of companies with 50 or more employees are required to have gender parity (60/40 at least).

The Equal Pay Standard
The Equal Pay Standard was written in cooperation between the labour movement, the employers‘ confederation and the Ministry of Labor and Finance in Iceland. The standard is a set of rules and guidelines which analyze the pay structure within a company and show whether or not men and women are paid equal wages for the same or equal value of work within the workplace. When companies and institutions have fulfilled the requirements of the standard, they undergo an audit to make sure women and men are being paid equally, and then they receive a certification that they have complied with the standard.

The Equal Pay Standard was introduced in 2012 and several Icelandic companies had already undergone voluntary certification using this standard. Of course, now, many more companies in Iceland will implement the standard since it is mandatory! However, the standard doesn’t have to be mandatory, but can be implemented by companies in other countries on a voluntary  basis.

The Equal Pay Standard was written to conform to international standards and accepted practices in ISO standards. The standard has already been translated into English, and we hope that other countries will look to the standard and adapt it to their needs.

Women Protest the Gender Pay Gap in Iceland
The gender pay gap adjusted for working hours is now 16% in Iceland, but the unadjusted gender pay gap is much higher. The average wages of women in Iceland are only 72.5%% of the average wages of men.

One of the main reasons women work fewer hours in Iceland than men is that women are performing unpaid labour in the home and for the family. We at the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association believe that we need to look at the larger unadjusted figure to measure the gender pay gap, not the lower figure adjusted for working hours.

Women in Iceland have walked out of their jobs five times in the last 42 years to protest the gender pay gap.

On October 24th, 1975, women all over Iceland left work to demonstrate the importance of women’s contribution to society. This day was popularly called “kvennafrí”, or Women’s Day Off. In 1985, 25,000 women left their work again, to protest income inequality. In 2005, we celebrated Women‘s Day Off for the third time and tens of thousands of women left work the minute they stopped getting paid, at 2:08 p.m. In 2010 women in Iceland again left work, this time at 2:25 p.m. And in 2016, women left work at 2:38.

Today, the average wages of women in Iceland are only 72.5% of the average wages of men. Therefore, women have earned their wages after only 5 hours and 48 minutes, in an average workday of 8 hours. This means that, if the workday begins at 9 a.m. and finishes at 5 p.m, women stop being paid for their work at 2:48 p.m.

We have gained only 40 minutes in twelve years. If progress continues at the same pace, we will need to wait another 35 years before women in Iceland have the same wages on average as men, in the year 2052!

Kjarajafnrétti strax! Income Equality Now!

Brynhildur Heiðar- og Ómarsdóttir
Managing Director

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