Feminism and Gender Equality

On 24 October 1975, Icelandic women left their occupations and gathered on the streets of Reykjavík and in towns around the country. Up to 90 percent of Icelandic women took the day off. In Reykjavík alone 25,000 women met at Lækjartorg, the main square of the city, to bring attention to the role of women in society (Einarsdóttir Þ. , 2000). What made the event noteworthy was the exceptionally high participation, which, more than anything else, made the day a significant milestone in the battle for gender equality. According to Einarsdóttir (2000), the Icelandic women were able to demonstrate a united effort, and the power of this unity was seen by many as a threat to a stable society that rested on traditional gender roles.

Although developments related to gender equality in Iceland have been shaped by international trends, Icelanders have not merely followed ideas originated outside the country. At times, in fact, events in Iceland have served as an inspiration and an example for changes elsewhere. Women’s Day Off was one such event. Another noteworthy event occurred in 1980, when Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was elected as the fourth President of the Republic of Iceland – the first women in the world to be democratically elected Head of State (Centre for Gender Equality Iceland, 2012).

Because the topic of this thesis is focused on politics and climate-related public discourses, the role of women in politics is of special interest. As elsewhere, politics has traditionally been the domain of men, and only in the past few decades did the proportion of women in politics reach a two-digit number. An important milestone in this development was the establishment of the Women’s Alliance (Kvennalistinn) in 1983; its main objective was women’s liberation and the increased representation of women in politics. Before the existence of the Women’s Alliance, women comprised 5 percent or less of parliamentarians, but after the elections in 1983, that figure rose to 15 percent (Centre for Gender Equality Iceland, 2012). The goal of the Women’s Alliance was to enter politics, not on the traditional right-left spectrum, but to bring the special experience of women to the table. This idea about women having a special experience related to the understanding that Icelandic society was infused with rules, norms and use of language, the underlying values of which were clearly masculine. The common experience of women was marginalized and silenced. The new party wanted to emphasize the experience of women and such feminine values as the importance of nurturing, intuition and holistic solutions (Einardóttir, 2004). Although the Women’s

Alliance had representatives in the parliament for only three election periods (1983, 1987 and 1991) its influence on women’s representation in politics was considerable, not only because of their own members, but also because the existence of the Alliance encouraged other parties to pay more attention to gender equality and increase the representation of women in their own parties. The proportion of women in the parlia-ment has continued to rise, and reached more than 40 percent for the first time in the 2009 elections, when 42.9 percent of those elected were women. The corresponding number in the 2013 elections was 39.7 percent (Althingi, n.d.) . At the local level, the number of women in municipal councils reached close to 40 percent in elections held in 2010, and four years later the percentage was 44 percent (Centre for Gender Equality Iceland, 2014).

Not only is the political participation of women high compared to other countries, but Iceland also boasts the highest rate of women’s participation in the labor market among OECD countries: 77.6 percent (Centre for Gender Equality Iceland, 2012).

One would expect – with such a high level of participation in both politics and the economy – that there would be few sectors where women had not left their mark. Yet, this is not the case. The labor market is highly gender segregated, with women being the majority employed in education, health care and certain service sectors and men still dominating the industrial sector. Women are still a minority in private-sector management positions. In 2009, only 19 percent of managers in the private sector were women and women represented only 13 percent of members on corporate boards (Centre for Gender Equality Iceland, 2012).

This strong gender segregation became quite obvious in the years leading up to the financial crisis that resulted in the crash of the Icelandic banks in the fall of 2008.

Although more women than men were employed in the financial sector, they were primarily in the role of customer service officers, whereas men were much more likely to be experts and managers. A woman was a rare sight in the top management layers of the banks, and the financial sector was controlled by relatively small groups of ho-mogenous males, whose actions were strongly colored by masculine values and ideas about hegemonic masculinity (Einarsdóttir & Pétursdóttir, 2010).

As Einarsdóttir and Pétursdóttir (2010) point out, the top executives of the Icelandic banks were often described as Vikings, and the discourse around the expanding bank-ing activities abroad was loaded with masculine symbolism. Not only did the bankers themselves use this discourse, but key politicians did as well, and it became a generally accepted mainstream discourse in the years leading up to the crisis. The bankers were not only clever, but brave, quick to think and showing initiative. The discourse about the Icelandic bankers as “winners” was woven together with nationalism, and their nationality used as an explanation for their brilliance.

The crash of the financial sector was followed by a period of intense self-examination.

This included some critical analysis of the dominant discourse. The gender imbalance

among top managers was one component often mention as a possible explanation for the reckless decision making that had occurred. The post-crash period also saw women taking leadership roles in the restructuring work, to rebuild the financial sector and to find ways to adapt society to a new reality. Women were put in charge of two of the three new banks that were established on the remains of the banks that had crashed, and for the first time in the history of Iceland, a woman became a prime minister.

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir assumed the position of prime minister in February 2009, and remained in that position until the spring of 2013.

The role of women in the aftermath of the financial crisis did not go unnoticed by the foreign media. As Janet Elise Johnson wrote in the US magazine The Nation: “After a testosterone-fueled boom and bust, the women of Iceland took charge” (2011). The quote is the subtitle of the article but the main title of the article is “The Most Feminist Place in the World”, referring to the fact that the Gender Gap Index has rated Iceland’s gender gap as the smallest in the world for several consecutive years.

There have also been words of caution about not over-glorifying the success of gender equality in Iceland. As Johnson, Einarsdottir and Petursdottir (2013) point out, in spite of Iceland’s high ranking in global equality indexes, gender equality is often missing in practice. They discuss the role of neoliberal political policies in Iceland in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21^st century, which have been partly blamed for creating the conditions that led to the financial crisis, and give examples of how these policies contributed to gender inequality. The transnational business masculinity celebrated in the Icelandic banking sector before the crash was complemented by a reconstruc-tion of femininity, with young Icelandic women being highly sexualized. Tourism, for example, was promoted with images of stunning Icelandic women ready and willing to “party” with visiting American and European men. Although the authors recognize the important role played by women in the aftermath of the crisis and the emphasis on gender-sensitive policies promoted by the left-wing government in power between 2009 and 2013, they argue that the evidence is still mixed, and they caution against jumping too quickly to conclusions about a feminist success in the post-crash years (Johnson, Einarsdóttir, & Pétursdóttir, 2013).

Developments in the Icelandic financial sector in the years leading up to the crash demonstrate how gender inequality can exist in specific spheres of society, even in countries where the overall situation in gender equality is considered to be in good.

It should be noted, however, that women did not wait until after the crash to try to have some influence in the financial sector. Among the few financial companies that did not lose massive amounts of money during the crash was a small investment fund established by two women who had purposely withdrawn from high-level management positions in the financial and corporate world because they felt that there was too little room for feminine values. Instead, they created a small investment fund called Auður Capital, in which the explicitly stated goal was to integrate feminine values into financial

services. Halla Tómasdóttir, one of the two women, explained how they managed this integration in a Ted Talk given in New York a couple of years after the financial crash.

In her talk she emphasized four principles: Risk awareness (we don’t invest in things we don’t understand), straight talking (we use simple language that people understand), the valuing of emotional capital (people make or lose money, not excel sheets) and profits with principles (we care how profit is made) (Tómasdóttir, 2010).

In summary, even though feminism continues to be hotly debated, it stands strong in modern day Icelandic culture, and an emphasis on gender equality has reached most areas of Icelandic society. Even in the financial sector, where certain elements of masculinity were praised and highly valued during the boom years, the seeds of an alternative approach, embracing more feminine principles, had already been planted before the crash of 2008, and those seeds started to bear fruit in the period when new solutions were being searched for. In October 2011, six large companies established a new non-profit organization called Festa, Icelandic Center for Corporate Social Responsibility. Three years later the number of companies that were members of Festa had reached 49, including all three of the large banks, energy companies, aluminum production companies and insurance companies (Festa, n.d.). This development indi-cates that principles of social responsibility are gaining ground in the private sector, and this could serve to counterbalance the still-present demands for quick and easy profits.

But does the influence of feminism reach even some of the most masculine sec-tors of all – the security sector and the energy sector – organizations that are highly relevant when preventing and adapting to climate change? How much room is there for feminist values in those sectors and the associated climate-related discourses? Ex-ploring this question is one of the tasks of this dissertation and an underlying theme in the analysis that follows. I begin by turning attention to the relationship between climate change and security.