Agnes M. Sigurðardóttir is the new Bishop of Iceland. She compares
her job to being prime minister and president at the same time; both
positions have been held by women in Iceland before. Iceland is also
top of the world when it comes to female employment. They were first to
introduce shared parental leave, they have introduced boardroom quotas
and they are the first to introduce a ‘fair pay certificate’ securing
equal pay for equal work in the public sector.
They have come this far, yet Bishop Agnes M. Sigurðardóttir in this
month’s portrait feels attitudes are lagging behind. “Women’s words are
not trusted to the same extent as men’s”. There is a fight for the
power and authority to define the right faith.
When women conquer new arenas, gender issues become important in new
settings. Gender and innovation is a new research area spearheaded by
Sweden. It is about challenging what we take for granted. The Swedish
research organisation Vinnova calls it a norm-critical innovation where
gender and ethnicity are the elements which will provide more
innovative solutions and improved competitiveness.
There is also a market waiting, not for a pink car, but for
innovations which satisfy women’s needs and purchasing power.
These are exciting times. Things are happening. Even for the
latecomer Denmark. Men have got a bit longer paternal leave, and
the Minister for Equality Manu Sareen is very happy because the
Danish alternative to legally binding boardroom quotas, the Danish
model, shows more women are entering the boardrooms.
When we look at the graph made by Björn Lindahl illustrating the
development in the Nordic countries, the arrow points up and up. Yet
things are moving too slowly. Important areas are lagging behind.
According to the Gender Equality Barometer, the Nordic region will only
reach full gender equality in 2030 at the earliest.
What will it be? Not pink, but a yet to be defined new reality with
a better distribution of power and authority.
