Land and Forest Iceland
Equality is a Choice at Land and Forest Iceland
16th October 2025
Jafnvægisvogin er hreyfiaflsverkefni sem ætlað er að auka á jafnvægi kynja í efsta lagi stjórnunar fyrirtækja, stofnana og sveitarfélaga á Íslandi. Árleg viðurkenningarhátíð verkefnisins var haldin 9. október og þar voru veittar viðurkenningar 128 þátttakendum sem hafa náð markmiði verkefnisins um jöfn kynjahlutföll í framkvæmdastjórn.
Land and Forest Iceland meets the requirements of the Association of Women Business Leaders in Iceland (FKA) regarding the proportion of women in the institution’s executive council. The agency therefore received the Jafnvægisvogin (Gender Balance Scale) recognition again this year, just as it did last year. Two representatives of the agency planted a tree in the Equality Grove during the award ceremony.
Jafnvægisvogin is a leadership initiative designed to promote gender balance in the top levels of management within Icelandic companies, institutions, and municipalities. This year’s annual recognition ceremony took place on 9 October, honouring 128 participating organisations that have achieved the project’s goal of gender-balanced executive teams.
Ágúst Sigurðsson, Director of Land and Forest Iceland, accepted the award along with Hanna Þóra Hauksdóttir, Head of Human Resources. Representing the agency at the tree planting in the Equality Grove were Edda Linn Riese, Records Manager, and Tómas Halldórsson Alexander, who recently joined the agency as a GIS Specialist.
“Sadly, little has changed”
Although the number of recognised organisations may appear encouraging, Bryndís Reynisdóttir, Project Manager of Jafnvægisvogin at FKA, pointed out in an article in Viðskiptablaðið that disappointingly little progress has been made in gender equality over the past year. Women remain underrepresented in top executive positions in Iceland: only 21% of managing directors are women, and of the 27 listed companies on Nasdaq Iceland, just four have female CEOs — roughly 15%.
She emphasised that “every company, institution or municipality must examine its own position and demand that gender balance be achieved at the highest level of management, because equality is nothing more than a decision.”
Photos show the group of award recipients at the ceremony in the University of Iceland’s Great Hall on 9 October, and representatives of Land and Forest Iceland planting a birch seedling in the Equality Grove.
FKA's Gender Equality Dashboard
The FKA website provides a valuable resource for statistical data concerning gender equality, offering critical insights into gender dynamics within the Icelandic business sector. The platform presents data on gender ratios among university graduates, gender representation across various industries, and the GemmuQ gender scale for publicly traded companies. The dashboard is accessible at www.fka.is/verkefni/jafnvaegisvogin/maelabord.
