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.