Celebrating Women's History Month

25,000 women gathered in Reykjavik for the Women’s Strike, October 24, 1975 | Icelandic Women’s History Archives

In March, as we celebrate Women's History month, we cast a spotlight on and recognize the vital role of women across all sectors, and work towards increasing our commitment to gender equality and women‘s empowerment. As an Icelander, this has tremendous meaning for me.

Each year several reports are published. The Global Gender Gap (GGG) report ranks 146 countries on a variety of benchmarks that compare male and female treatment, and the 2024 Women, Peace, and Security Index (WPS) ranks 177 countries on their inclusion, justice, and safety for women.

All of this information and more is pulled together by Forbes to rank the top countries for Women‘s Rights and Gender Equality. Although not perfect, this ranking provides a good indication of how each country is doing in relationship to these matters.

Some of the issues these reports look at include: education, employment, financial inclusion, parliamentary representation, absence of legal discrimination, access to justice, maternal mortality ratio, domestic violence and political violence targeting women, just to name a few.

Long story short, the Northern European countries fair best with Iceland ranked highest, followed by Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden, and interestingly, countries that rank highly for women‘s rights also score consistently well in the areas of democracy, peacefulness and even prosperity. Researchers agree that overall correlation between gender equality and country health is significant.

Here are a few interesting facts on Iceland‘s ranking by the numbers, and to put this into perspective, I‘ve used the USA rankings as a comparison.

The rankings of Iceland were earned over many years with one especially important event happening on October 24th, 1975. Icelandic women went on strike, stayed home from work, and gave up all domestic work in protest of unfair wages and poor working conditions. Nothing worked that day. For those of you interested in learning more, there is a great documentary called “The Day Iceland Stood Still.” It tells the story of the 24 hours that sparked a revolution. Five years later, Iceland was the first country to democratically elect a woman, Vigdis Finnbogadottir, as president in any nation. Since then, we have evolved into a leading country in gender equality, and in my mind, it is because of this day 50 years ago that we have arrived in this place.

“You can’t be what you can’t see” is a quote from Marian Edelman, later adopted by Geena Davis, that I often think of.

Vigdis held her position as president for 16 years and we grew up looking up to this amazing woman as head of state. Girls saw a strong role model in their leader. They grew up knowing they could become anything they wanted to, even president. My wife was 11 years old when she met Vigdis for the first time and she inspired her to dream big. We are fortunate that collectively, as a nation, we’ve made the decision to embrace equality. It is something that we are extremely proud of. We have a female president, a female prime minister, the heads of the political parties that run the government are all women, out of 6 parties in parliament - 4 leaders are women, of the 5 parties running the capitol Reykjavik, all leaders are women, we have a woman bishop, a woman head of police and I could go on and on. Looking at Iceland as a test case, one can definitely update the quote from Marian Edelman to “You can be what you can see”

"We are by no means perfect, can do a lot better and we make mistakes, but we have been able to create strong role models for both boys and girls, to grow up in equality, and I hope we continue to do so."

We have a strong support system in Iceland. We have universal health care. All education, including the University of Iceland, is free. We have paid maternity and paternity leave. We are a peaceful nation with a low crime rate and a social fabric that sets out to catch those who fall between the cracks. We are by no means perfect, can do a lot better and we make mistakes, but we have been able to create strong role models for both boys and girls, to grow up in equality, and I hope we continue to do so.

On June 1st, 2024, my wife, Halla Tomasdottir was on the ballot, running for president of Iceland. She was one of 12 people running, 6 women and 6 men. Would she have run if she hadn’t had such amazing role models that came before her? One can never know, but she did, and won by a 9-percentage point difference, with the two runner ups also being women.

My wife is the President of Iceland. It is sometimes a little strange to think about, but I am so incredibly proud of her, and I will do my best to support her in any way I can. Many people ask me how I feel, and I can sense there is some bite in the question. How do I feel about having my wife as president? What does that do to my self-esteem? Am I comfortable being number 2? My reply is that I have enough self-confidence to support a strong woman and that this is not about me and my ego. No one would ask the wife of a president how she was dealing with the fact that he was in a more powerful position than she was, why would it be any different for me?

It’s important to move beyond the norms and believe you can become anything you want. I find it difficult to understand why some men get angry if they earn less money or are in less a position of power than their wives or girlfriends. Why do we get frustrated and keep score on who did the dishes or cleaned the house. In the grand scheme of things, these things are so minor they shouldn’t even be given a second thought. My wife and I have both been through points in life where the other needs to carry more of the load. That is partnership, being role models to our children, and that is being equal.

I am now the first gentleman of Iceland. It is the biggest honor of my life, and it is all because of the courage of my wife who stands on the shoulders of pioneers.

Happy Women’s History Month! Lift the women in your life, become role models, and strive for equality for all.