[JURIST] Iceland’s Parliament [official website] presented a bill [text, PDF] on Tuesday that would require all public and private companies that employ more than 25 people to prove they provide [AFP report] equal pay for employees. If a company is unable to prove employees are paid equally through an auditing system, the company could receive fines. The legislation would apply to discrimination based on gender, race, national origin, religion, disability, age, sexual orientation and gender identity. While Iceland ranked first in the World Economic Forum’s 2015 global gender performance [report], this bill aims to eliminate the 7% wage gap that exists in the country and would be the first of its kind in world history. The bill will now be subject [BBC Report] to a series of debates, and if it passes, it will take effect in January 2018.

The gender pay gap is an issue that is being addressed across the globe. In 2014, the California legislature found a 16-cent wage gap between men’s and women’s pay and a wage gap of 44 cents between Latina women and white men. In October of 2015, the California Governor signed [JURIST report] the Fair Pay Act [official text] aimed at closing the wage gap between male and female employees. In March of 2015, the UK House of Lords [official website] debated a bill [JURIST report] passed through Parliament [official website] that would require certain businesses to reveal whether there are differences in the pay of male and female employees. In contemplation of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2015, Eurostat [official website], the statistical office of the European Union (EU), revealed [press release] that women, on average, earned 16 percent less than men in the EU, and that the UK has the sixth-largest gender pay gap within the EU.