
Iceland becomes first country to legalise equal pay - dacm
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/iceland-country-legalise-equal-pay-180101150054329.html
======
avar
The article is light on details, so hopefully I can help out as an Icelandic
speaker. I'm only just familiarizing myself with this now.

It was already illegal to have unequal pay for the two sexes and other
protected classes in Iceland. What's being changed here is mostly that the
burden of proof is being shifted around.

Now organizations starting with 25 employees (and more requirements kick in at
250) need to have some sort of process for how they manage promotions, and
implement pay scales that they can demonstrate to the institute of equality
are conducive to the outcome of equal pay.

If they fail to do so they can start getting daily fines until they fix their
processes.

So this is essentially an attempt to fix corporate governance through
compliance before issues of equal pay arise, providing companies more rope to
hang themselves by making them produce an audit trail of potential
incompliance, and giving the government the power to fine companies for what
it sees as structural problems, without having enough proof to pursue specific
cases of unequal pay.

Edit: I misread the number of employee requirement. It's being phased in with
companies with 250+ employees needing to be compliant by December 31, 2018,
then each year in steps of 150-249, 90-149, until companies with 25-89
employees need to be compliant on December 31, 2021[3]

1\.
[http://www.althingi.is/altext/146/s/1054.html](http://www.althingi.is/altext/146/s/1054.html)

2\. [http://www.stadlar.is/thjonusta/nyjustu-frettir/stadlamal-
fr...](http://www.stadlar.is/thjonusta/nyjustu-frettir/stadlamal-frettabref-
stadlarads/2017/06/jafnlaunastadallinn-ist-85-um-hvad-er-hann-og-til-
hvers.aspx)

3\.
[http://www.jafnretti.is/jafnretti/?D10cID=ReadNews3&ID=1404](http://www.jafnretti.is/jafnretti/?D10cID=ReadNews3&ID=1404)

~~~
jfaucett
Am I the only one who thinks "institute of equality" sounds a little too
Orwellian? The Minitrue newspeak scholar might proclaim: let there be no
differences in income or outcome let the two words be one, I give you: uncome.

In seriousness though, I think this might make more problems than it solves,
but we'll see, hopefully it does what it is intended to do. The main problem
as I see it, is that the vast majority of the pay gap is not due to evil
corporations hating women and discriminating against them, but to a myriad of
other factors, see this study by the European Commission:
[http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/gender-pay-
gap/c...](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/gender-equality/gender-pay-
gap/causes/index_en.htm).

A lot of these regulations end up hurting women more than they help because
they don't take these other factors into account. For instance, I live in
Germany and a factor working against women in the workforce is all the
regulations that make it so you can't fire a woman if she becomes pregnant and
have to keep her position open for years while she takes mother's leave. There
are some compensating laws that allow men to take some of the same leave
options but still don't fully compensate for this disadvantage.

EDIT: Put this here to see what others think or are trying (in your companies,
startups, etc). Another factor is the way in which individuality and ownership
is rewarded through promotions etc. in company culture. Women (in the
distribution) tend to be much more cooperative and work better in
team/collaborative environments where its hard to determine who is responsible
for the outcome (I can't remember the study but I think there was a You are
not So Smart podcast on collective intelligence about this). Anyway, I think
changing the structure and culture inside companies to be more accommodating /
financially rewarding to collaboration and group success could be another more
effective way to help close the pay gap. At least on paper, women outperform
men by a good margin on collective intelligence tasks.

~~~
mafribe
It's more than a little Orwellian!

For example Pol Pot and his henchmen justified their mass murder by accusing
their victims as enemies of the "equalitarian state" [1].

It's interesting that this is being downvoted. Do the downvoters question the
historical veracity of the connection between totalitarianism (such as Pol
Pot's) and equality?

[1] Daniel Bultmann: Kambodscha unter den Roten Khmer

~~~
evanlivingston
I assume the downvoters take issue with your comparison between one of the
worst genocidal regimes in history to one of the most unassuming, high
functioning democracies by using only the similarity in a naming convention
that the two different states used.

------
swarnie_
Do two people doing the same job, with the same skills and the same experience
get paid differently because of their gender? Its something I've never seen in
my professional life in the UK.

I've seen reports where men earn more if you take the entire working
population in to account, but that seems more based on the jobs done rather
then the respective genders.

~~~
irpapakons
Yes, there is both an adjusted and unadjusted gender pay gap.

~~~
dmichulke
I always wonder - if there is such a huge gap, why don't folks just employ
women, since they're cheaper and do the same work?

Isn't that the question to be answered in order to really understand what's
going on?

Otherwise I bet I can always find, for any company, a subset of people that
are underpaid relative to the rest, be it related to age, gender, race, sexual
preferences, employment history, ZIP code, whatever.

~~~
falcolas
There isn't a huge gap, not for the same job/title combination (there are
cases where the gap does exist for the same job, but it's typically less than
10%). The gap widely most widely reported, the 70% figure, is primarily caused
because of the genders holding different jobs, where the average pay for
female-dominated jobs is less than the average pay for male-dominated jobs.

~~~
wrsh07
So... this is light on details into their analysis, but Laszlo Block [formerly
of Google - where I work fwiw], claimed "In 2015 we added 8,214 employees to
Google. And the women we hired, on average, received a 30 percent bigger
salary increase upon joining the company, compared to men."

If you accepted his claim that Google does pay genders equitably, then this
would indicate a large pay disparity outside of Google.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-
leadership/wp/2016/04...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-
leadership/wp/2016/04/29/how-the-whats-your-current-salary-question-hurts-the-
gender-pay-gap/)

~~~
dragonwriter
> If you accepted his claim that Google does pay genders equitably, then this
> would indicate a large pay disparity outside of Google.

Or it would indicate a successful outreach program at Google for women by
which they were successful at getting qualified women not currently working in
tech to apply; this doesn't necessarily imply a like-duties gender pay gap.

~~~
collyw
Could it indicate discrimination against men at Google?

------
pebers
On the face of it, the title is incorrect; lots of other countries have had
laws against gender discrimination for a long time (e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Pay_Act_1970](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Pay_Act_1970)).
The article doesn't really give enough details to understand why this case is
apparently unique.

------
gruez
>makes Iceland the first country in the world to legalise equal pay between
men and women.

It wasn't legal before?

~~~
Amorymeltzer
>A new law making it illegal to pay men more than women has taken effect in
Iceland.

>makes Iceland the first country in the world to legalise equal pay between
men and women.

Weird writing here by ALJ. The differences between illegal, decriminalized,
legal, and mandated are important. I think we in the US have grown to learn
the differences a little better lately due to marijuana. It's illegal
Federally, some states have decriminalized it, and some states have completely
legalized it; no states have yet to mandate marijuana use.

~~~
didgeoridoo
I think they’re trying to use “legalise” to mean “put legal structures
around”. Probably they meant “legislate”?

~~~
chillingeffect
I interpret this to mean men have no legal recourse when their employer lowers
their salary to match women's.

This will obviously disincentivize men from working as hard and lower
productivity.

------
cup-of-tea
So if a man tries to negotiate a higher salary he'll be told no because it's
illegal? What if a woman tries?

In most workplaces at the higher levels everyone is essentially doing their
own specific version of a particular job. Two people might share the same
title and job description but what they actually _do_ can be very different
and some people are simply more valuable than others. This kind of legislation
seems to be enforcing a drone mentality, i.e. everyone is equal and does
exactly what they are told, no more, no less.

~~~
madsbuch
I guess the difference is in the assumption: Iceland assume a gender wage gab
but no gender competencies gab. This assumption is also advantageous for men:
Iceland has an equal system for men wrt. paternaty/maternaty leave.
Furthermore we can also expect that nursing and kindergarten teaching
professions will be easier for men to get into than is the case now. Lastly,
there is also an ongoing debate about stay-at-home fathers (A consequence is
that the Nordics are doing something about a _very_ deep assumption that women
are better emotional providers than men).

In the Nordics (I am Danish) we increasingly talk about _gender_ equality as
on objective thing, where both men and women have their problems. Though on
the international scene gender equality means women's rights. Therefore this
angling of the article.

~~~
collyw
Still waiting for the equality measures to hit those who don't have kids for
whatever reason.

We always seem to end up doing extra to compensate for maternity/paternity
leave.

~~~
madsbuch
That is a very interesting conversation, although OT. But it is interesting to
think about whether there should be an alternative for those not wanting kids
such as getting the leave anyways to use on whatever.

On the other hand there might be reason that we should give incentive to give
birth to more kids.

~~~
collyw
More than enough people in the world, I see no reason to encourage more.

------
osrec
Equal pay is an interesting topic, but it's a tough one. For example, in
tennis, the prize money at grand slams is equal for both genders, yet the men
play more tennis (and arguably at a higher level). The rationale often cited
is that both genders are being pushed to their limit in their respective
groups. By that logic, should anyone less naturally capable at a particular
job (but giving it their all) be paid the same as someone more talented who is
also giving it their all? It would be interesting to hear people's views on
this!

~~~
bkohlmann
The reason they are paid the same in tennis is that they bring in
approximately the same revenue via sponsorship, ticket sales, etc. Women's
tennis is basically as popular as men's at this point.

However, this is not the case in professional basketball, soccer or even golf.
In all three cases, the men's leagues far outperform the women's in terms of
getting revenue from the marketplace...and the commensurate salaries / prize
purses reflect this. The US Womens Soccer team made a big deal about this
recently, but when you look at the income produced by the men in professional
leagues vs. women's leagues, there are stark differences.

~~~
osrec
I don't think that's true in the slightest. Men's tennis is much, much more
popular across the board! That's actually why guys like Novak Djokovic were
complaining!

~~~
bkohlmann
It looks like in 2005 and 2008, revenue was similar. It's diverged since then.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/606439/tennis-atp-and-
wt...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/606439/tennis-atp-and-wta-tour-
revenue/)

2007 was also the first year that Wimbledon (the last holdout of the four
majors) paid the same to men and women victors.

It seems psychologically hard to regress from that benchmark, even if in
recent years overall revenue has once again diverged.

And in non-majors, the pay disparity has returned, reflecting the differences
in revenues:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/sports/tennis/equal-
pay-g...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/sports/tennis/equal-pay-gender-
gap-grand-slam-majors-wta-atp.html)

------
DyslexicAtheist
I've been involved in a couple tech-oriented recruiting companies. There are 2
related problems making this more nuanced than what is visible at first sight
IMO.

1) In many countries it's normal for companies to keep the salaries secret so
employee A has no idea what employee B gets. Even Employee A is an utter
slacker but good with selling themselves, A will generally go further. (There
is a strong relation to success/leadership positions & Dunning-Kruger). Being
honest about equal pay would mean companies have to be transparent about their
pay-grades (kudos to those who do and not threaten to prosecute employees when
they discuss this internally).

2) Women are less likely to either suffer from Dunning-Kruger. Nor are they as
easily prepared to _" fake it, until they make it"_ (as their male
counterparts). I've seen this both as a lifelong engineer and in my countless
interviews with applicants. Women tend to be more honest upfront about what
they know. There are probably articles/blogs that confirm this though.

This is something companies need to incorporate into their applicant
screening. Considering how idiotic most interviews are still run (whiteboard
coding, creation of artificial stress in the interview, etc ...) I have little
hope. If we want to make it fair we need to rethink hiring. (which is easy to
say when the whole world is pushing for more automation within HR[1][2], with
_[2]_ being especially questionable since an interview isn't just for
companies getting know you but also for you to assess your prospective future
employer. Not much of a good first impression at all if the interviewer is
literally a f __*ing bot, is it?

We need to discuss not just gender-equality but ageism and quite a number of
other problems which I believe are rooted in transparency of HR processes &
on-boarding.

[1] [https://blog.valbonne-consulting.com/2015/06/13/using-big-
da...](https://blog.valbonne-consulting.com/2015/06/13/using-big-data-to-
analyse-your-personality-and-character/) [2] [https://ideal.com/ai-
recruiting/](https://ideal.com/ai-recruiting/)

------
callesgg
I am mostly interested how this will be implemented.

How do you isolate differences that may arise due to different individuals
being of different value to the company for one reason or the other.

~~~
taneq
Indeed. If you equalise pay between men and women, then either (a) you have to
equalise pay among all employees for the same work, or (b) you throw merit-
based salaries out the window and mandating paying more to one gender than the
other for the same work.

------
krona
I don't know what the statistics for Iceland are, but at least in the UK such
regulations would, on average, help men in their 20's more than women.

------
indubitable
A genuine and pure gender pay gap doesn't makes much of any economic sense.
Imagine a company is able to hire women for x% less than men. And we assume
these women are absolutely identically, if not superiorly, skilled. What would
happen? Unless you think corporations are big into missing obvious
opportunities to reduce labor costs, you'd suddenly have companies approaching
near 100% women. Companies are already actively working to marginalize and cut
the costs on labor as much as possible.

I think identity politics is getting somewhat out of control. Imagine you look
at the pay balance between short and tall individuals, gender adjusted. It
would be substantially in favor of the taller. Does this mean it's inherently
discriminatory and that we need to start getting government to pass 'height
gap' laws?

Perhaps the pretentiousness of social science is more at fault. The adjusted
wage gap is supposed to compensate for every single factor in an employee's
value and weight it perfectly fairly. That, I think, is beyond absurd. Even at
the most fundamental level in that an individual's job title is rarely
indicative of what they actually do. 'Senior Programmer A' and 'Senior
Programmer B' are often going to be taking on vastly different
responsibilities, even at the same company. Operations are not finely greased
machines with each cog operating in its exact designated way. Individual
differences are what result in one person starting at a low level and spending
the rest of their life there, and another starting at a low level (with
similar qualifications) and working at top level operations 8 years later. And
at some snapshot in time you'd see our second person seemingly receiving
disproportionate compensation. Well that's because they were doing a
disproportionately better job.

This is not to say that there's no inefficiency in companies such that
meritorious workers get left behind, or similarly that less capable workers
get promoted. But, excepting cronyism, these tend to be inadvertent and
undesirable inefficiencies. Horrible ideas like Ballmer's stack ranking are
all just desperate efforts to try to resolve this inefficiency. It costs money
and it hurts product - nobody wants it. If a company thought that filling
every single position they have with transgender transracial dwarves would
increase their longterm bottom line by even just a few percent compared to the
status quo, our transgendered transracial dwarves would suddenly be the
hottest hires on the market.

------
guy98238710
I would echo what one Nordic poster wrote in a subcomment: Nordics see
equality as both female and male thing. I would venture to add that <10%
adjusted wage difference is negligible when girls in some countries (including
mine) have 50% higher participation in university-level education and women
have ~1000% higher success rate in child custody cases. Interestingly, the
latter two stats are mostly or fully under government control in most
countries, i.e. they are instituted.

The article also quotes Global Gender Gap Report, which lists countries with
education dominated by female students as having 1.0 (perfect) score in
education attainment. In other words, girls missing out on school is bad while
boys missing out on school is okay.

------
joeblow9999
This is such a terrible, terrible plan.

A lawyer's dream come true.

An employer has two choices: don't hire any women, or create a flat uniform
compensation structure that can't possibly attract star performers. This only
works for janitorial, fast food, and the like. This does NOT work for high
skilled high value knowledge workers like lawyers, programmers, etc.

If you DO hire women, prepare to get sued. If you DON'T hire women, prepare to
get sued.

<smdh>

------
a_imho
The WEF report.

[https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-gender-gap-
report...](https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-gender-gap-report-2017)

[http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2017.pdf](http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GGGR_2017.pdf)

------
ramblerman
Surely you have men with the same title now, earning different amounts because
they have different skill sets / value to the company.

Will this just get solved by creating more titles. Each salary bracket needs
its own title..

~~~
MollyR
That's exactly how I think it will be solved, or more people shift to become
contractors.

If the high performers aren't compensated properly, the ones that a company
needs the most, they will leave because they have options.

------
JMCQ87
Great, more compliance.

------
tabeth
I don't see how anyone could complain about this. Companies will simply create
more titles and then better illustrate the skills needed to be promoted.

------
joeblow9999
how do sales bonuses work under this system?

------
wrsh07
Should the title be "legislate," not "legalise"? I know it's copied from the
source, but it still seems a bit confusing / misleading.

