Jim McMahon

Many women in Iceland could start seeing more money in their paychecks soon. Earlier this year, the European nation’s new Equal Pay Standard began requiring companies that employ 25 people or more to demonstrate to the government that they’re paying men and women the same amount for doing the same jobs. Failure to comply could result in daily fines. In recent years, women in Iceland have earned roughly 14 to 20 percent less than men who do the same work, according to government figures. To protest the pay gap, thousands of women walked out of their jobs in the middle of a work day in 2016. Experts hope the new law, the first of its kind in the world, prompts other nations to address pay inequality. In the U.S., women earn, on average, 83 cents for every dollar that men earn for comparable work. Virginie Le Masson, a gender scholar at the Overseas Development Institute in London, told reporters that Iceland’s law “can help change attitudes to women in business as well as in politics, and inspire other countries to do the same.”