Iceland closes gender gap, but violence against women remains
REYKJAVIK, Iceland — For nine years in a row, the World Economic Forum has ranked Iceland as having the world’s smallest gender-equality gap, and for about as long gender studies Professor Gyda Margret Petursdottir has been asked how the Nordic island nation became such a paradise for women.
Her reply: “It isn’t.”
Iceland has a female prime minister and some of the world’s strongest laws on workplace equality and equal pay.
It also has one of Europe’s highest per capita levels of reported rapes, according to statistics agency Eurostat, although legal definitions differ from country to country, complicating comparisons.