now on bbc news...|celand: a women's paradise? iceland, a country of wild beauty and dramatic contrasts. less known is its increasingly equal society. i think it's in her blood. yeah. it's the only country in the world to have closed more than 90% of its gender gap — from education, to child care, to equal pay. women and girls enjoy a progressive lifestyle... iceland's most important role is to be a lighthouse for the rest of the world. ..but is everything as perfect as it seems? we have been marketed as this feminist paradise, which we are not. we want to hear from women about the challenges they still face... these women are coming from domestic abuse, where the main focus

is isolation. ..and how they continue to fight to improve their country even further. we are here to empower our participants to be a bigger part of the world. the only way to fix it is to be prepared to fight. we believe that we are changing the world. i music: leith tornn carnal by proc fiskal iceland has topped gender equality rankings for the last 15 years. perhaps one of the secrets to their success — start early. this is laufasborg, a nursery school in the capital, reykjavik. they do things a bit differently. the boys and the girls are separated for most of the day and are encouraged to do things usually associated with the opposite sex. it's called

"compensation work". sings and the girls are taught to be unapologetic and fierce. sings. meanwhile, the boys are doing something very different. they're getting in touch with their caring side, giving each other compliments and massages. it's a teaching method called "hjalli". the idea is that they develop their personalities

without the pressures and constraint of conventional gender stereotypes. iceland is a good place... bara was one of the first people to attend this school as a child. her mother helped set it up. her two daughters are the third generation with a connection to the hjalli method. speaks icelandic speaks icelandic what is the impact of what is the impact of this school on your daughters? this school on your daughters? opened 17 across the country. about 8% of children in iceland about 8% of children in iceland attend these schools, attend these schools,

and demand is growing — they've and demand is growing — they've opened 17 across the country. we need to start at the very beginning. at two years old, they have formed their idea of what it means to be a boy or a girl, and that will limit them for the next years, especially when they are having this concrete way of thinking. it is either—or — boy or a girl — you know?

not only individually — strong as they are — but helping them to train the kindness and closeness. i love what i'm doing. we all do. we believe that we are changing the world. yes! so, from a very early age, children in iceland are taught to think differently about gender roles not only at school, but in every aspect of life. this is a music space specifically for women, non—binary and trans people. "laeti" — "loudness" — was a word that we found together as a group. it's really appropriate because...

i don't know, for me, as a drum teacher, it's what i say all the time, like, "more loudness, more loudness." the girls do not take space, they just don't. and the boys take all the space. some of the boys. there are always exceptions, of course, but we are here to close the cultural gap, because, for some reasons, we don't see a lot of girls or non—binary or trans kids doing this. rock music plays do you feel empowered to be in a rock band? together: yes. ifeel more confident than i did. you just can be yourself here. you don't have to be like, uh, someone... yeah, someone else. because, like, rock isn't always for boys. and it has to be... girls also have to take up space. she sings in icelandic

the whole thing is based on the safer space idea. no so, if they can come in and they see that it is ok to take space, then they can go into the world and take space there. essentially, paying men more than women

for the samejob is illegal.

they have five kids, today

while the kids are in school, they are off to work. herjob is in the farming industry. my role here _ is in the farming industry. my role here is _ is in the farming industry. ij�*i role here is that is in the farming industry. m: role here is that i is in the farming industry. m; role here is that i work on the cages, make sure that the equipment is working, make sure the oxygen is good, the temperature is good. the salmon looks good- _ temperature is good. the salmon looks good. what's _ temperature is good. the salmon looks good. what's your - looks good. what's your favourite thing about yourjob? being with nature, being one with the ocean. the temperature of the water was 6.1 degrees and the oxygen was 92.

and is that good, or...? yeah, that's good. have you ever felt, "oh, if i get pregnant, things will be hard for me at work"? no, never. i've neverfelt, like, the pressure of not having kids because of my career. now that you're on paternity, what is a typical day with your daughter or with your kids when katrin is not around? it's not a maternal thing, to take care of the kids. you know, dads can take care of the kids

just as well as women can. this policy has had a profound impact here. 90% of all fathers take paternity leave. research shows that after going back to work, they continue to be significantly more involved. sharing child care from the very beginning, it seems, makes a long—term difference. probably, men respect women a lot more now that they have the chance to spend more time with the kids and get to know what women have done, like, for years and take part in that journey, ithink, has, like, helped equality here. but what about the lowest—paid jobs? most of them are done by women. solveig anna is head

of the second—largest union in iceland, conceived now so, this is, like, our community home... at 0k. ..where we do our meetings and we do our organising... mm—hm. ..and we prepare for, you know, action... the next fight. ..and the next fight, negotiations... about 90% of the country's workers belong to a union, the highest percentage in the world. how successful have you been in your demands? so, we have been quite successful. for example, we have focused on the pre—school workers, mostly women — 80% plus women — and we fought for, like, a special raise for them, and we got that, and... and how did you get it? how did we get it? by going on strike. we then went on with the same demands for other workers in similar workplaces. we won that too. strike again? strike again. yes, twice during covid.

very hard. last big important one that we achieved was this past winter when we focused on the cleaning sector, where we have almost 80% women — a huge group of immigrant women — who had described their horrible working situations and very low wages. so we took the same thought, and we said, "we're going to get special raises for this group," and we did. how? by threatening strike. by now, we've gone on so many strikes that they know we mean it. so, um, at this point, we kind of only have to threaten. iceland has a tradition of women coming together to demand change. in 1975, 25,000 women went on strike. they refused to work, cook and look after the children for one day. it was a pivotal moment that propelled iceland to the forefront of the fight for equality. i would say that the primary reason for our success

in negotiations in the past years is because of applying women. when working women come together, they can achieve real change in society. it sounds obvious — to benefit women elect women in positions of power — but, around the world, very few countries have a woman head of state. iceland was the first country to elect a woman president in 1980. i'm on my way to meet iceland's current president. and you've guessed it, it's a woman. hi. hi, madame president. nice to meet you. welcome. nice to meet you, sofia. thank you. how are you? good. welcome to bessastadir. is iceland a great place to be a woman? it is, but that doesn't mean we don't have work to do. we have opportunities in iceland to notjust lead as women, but to be authentically who we are. there's a step beyond

just representation that i think we sometimes forget to talk about, where women are allowed to bring their true leadership and approach to the table and notjust be like men, which was very much the reality early in my career. so, i think we have actually reached levels in iceland where we have and are shifting culture. that shift is everywhere to see. iceland recently became the first country in the world to issue a gender bond of 50 million euros to provide affordable housing for women on low incomes and to improve parental leave even further. there is an equality representative in all schools and universities, and all names are gender neutral. so, is this really a feminist paradise? even if iceland has made all this progress in a short period of time, something that is much harder to eradicate in any society, really, is gender violence.

i want to find out just how much of a problem there is here. a quarter of icelandic women have experienced rape or attempted rape, and around 40% have been subjected to physical or sexual violence. i've come to a small port town just outside reykjavik to meet hulda. doorbell rings hi. hi, hulda. as a child, she was abused by her grandfather, but for years she was too scared to speak out. in 2017, she founded 0fgar, a feminist organisation. when you talk about or hear about iceland, everybody says, like, "this is the safest country in the world, "we are the happiest, women are the safest." we have been marketed as this feminist paradise, and which we are not. of course,

we have less gun violence. we have less gang violence. but at home, we are not any more safe than women anywhere else and in europe. why's...why do you think it's such a big issue here? violence thrives in silence, and we have been taught since we were young to forgive and to forget and stay quiet. i grew up in all the privileges you can imagine, but at night or during the weekends, i was still being molested by my grandfather, and i didn't dare say anything because i did not want to shame my family. 0ur organisation is for survivors, done by survivors of gender—based violence, and we use all our resources — our social media, our energy — to give survivors of gender—based violence a safe place to give their voice. we didn't start, like, really speaking up about what happened to us until metoo in 2017. so now, women are starting to say, like, "this happened to me, this is what did it to me." some women in iceland believe the justice system has let them down in a systemic way.

more than 80% of reports of sexual violence are dropped — they never make it to court — and because of that, the state is being sued for misogyny. we thought it was time to take things further. we thought it was completely unacceptable that women were not taken seriously, and we decided to use the european court of human rights to sue the icelandic state, to show that we would not tolerate this, and to try to getjustice done. we have already succeeded in the way that icelandic authorities have had to answer very critical and difficult questions about police work when it comes to sexual violence. now we are just crossing our fingers that we will win. do you think that the government is doing enough to tackle the issue of gender violence? no, i don't think any government is doing enough.

and i think we also have challenges in the justice system and in the culture at large. as long as there's gender—based violence, we're not doing enough. it's as simple as that. iceland is a small country. it only has two shelters for women fleeing gender—based violence. hi! hiya. how are you? i'm fine. welcome. going to a shelter can be a very isolating experience. the focus here is making women feel less alone from the very beginning. so, this is the common area. 0k. the living room and the kitchen. so this is, maybe, like, the heart of the... ah! ..heart of the house. we eat dinner together every night... mm—hm. ..and this is very important for us — to have this common area where we come together... mm. ..and also, during the nights, we are here —

there are knitting nights, or whatever�*s going on, so... and it's an open—plan kitchen, as well. yeah. the idea is, like, we have our housewife that is here every day, but the idea is that the women, they also help, and they are, like, part of the household. and it's...| guess it's, sort of, you don't really feel isolated if there's a common space. yeah, that's the main idea. like, these women are coming from domestic abuse, where the main focus is isolation most of the time. so, it is important for us that the women and the children feel this sense of community in here. mm—hm. the fact is that the violence is just the same here as everywhere else. and it's a pandemic, and it's just in the background all the time, so people have gotten a bit used to it. and what makes it difficult is this paradox that everything is so perfect in iceland,

because we are. . .there are things that we are not doing well enough, and some things we are doing, like, worse than in other countries. how do you know that your way of doing things works? 20 years ago, 64% of women went back to the perpetrators, and last year it was 11%. we believe that all this work that we are doing is really helping the women to work their way away from the violence and away from the relationship.

we're at a vigil to remember all the icelandic women who have been killed by men. itjust shows that, even in a country that is supposed to be a great place for women, things are far from perfect. they sing in icelandic iceland has closed more than 90% of its gender gap. it's the only country

in the world to have done so. at this rate, when do you think that iceland will close the gender gap? my ambition is for iceland to be first to close the gender gap and hopefully by 2030. and iceland should — and already does — lead on that front. that's an ambitious goal, i realise that. but when you say "closing the gender gap by 2030," i mean, that's very soon. it is. do you think that's realistic? probably not a realistic goal, but we don't need realistic goals now. we need courageous goals, ambitious goals. we are facing massive challenges the world over, and empowering women, closing the gender gap is a big part of solving them, if not the key to solving them. do you feel optimistic about the changes that the new generation, you know, your daughter's generation, will bring?

absolutely. my daughters are so well educated about consent. they will hopefully take that into their relationship if they have one in the future. you don't need to have, like, a husband and two children, and a house, or like... you can be... 0ra wife. i will. .. you know... or a wife. linda is working on a purpose—built shelter, the first in iceland and one of very few in europe. and what will the common area look like? what do you envisage? warmth and cosiness, and that's, like, the main thing. i feel like it's really important that you get the time to still be yourself. i actually think maybe - iceland's most important role is not only to close its own gender gap, but to be - a lighthouse for the

rest of the world. . hello again. it was a bitterly cold night across many parts of the uk. temperatures widely below freezing and we had scenes like ths, a hard frost on ground and again the continuation of ice for some of us this morning as well. in fact, it was the coldest night of the winter so far. in northern scotland, the thermometer went down to —18.9 celsius. it will gradually get milder or less cold as we go into the early part of next week. for this afternoon, a bit of rain moving into scotland, northwest england and wales, that could fall temporarily as a bit of snow

over higher ground. sunshine in eastern areas. still a really cold day for most of us, temperatures up to four celsius but less cold in northern ireland, west wales and southwest england, temperatures here up to six celsius. tonight, some cloud moving eastwards, temperatures dropping quickly but perhaps recovering slightly into the early part of sunday morning. regardless, towards eastern areas, another hard frost expected, temperatures widely below freezing. not as cold again towards western areas because we have this milder, south—westerly wind bringing in some higher temperatures through the next few days. so for sunday, we will see those temperatures higher again for northern ireland and northern and western scotland. sunshine for most at first, perhaps more cloud in central and eastern areas on sunday afternoon, compared to this afternoon. and temperatures a smidgen higher than today, about four degrees but in the west again, up to nine celsius.

on monday, those south—westerly winds affecting more of us. it will bring a lot of cloud to scotland and northern ireland, into northern parts of england. outbreaks of rain here but temperatures rising. notice the greens and oranges, whereas the far southeast of england still holding onto the colder conditions. through next week, this is the temperature compared to average. it iniitally starts off below average by the blues there but gradually, the oranges and reds here, above—average temperatures spread further southwards across the uk. so, temperatures coming up to around 12 celsius throughout the week. it will be gradual but with that, some risk of melting and thawing snow which could bring some flooding issues. bye— bye. live from london. this is bbc news more evacuation orders are issued as devastating

wildlifes in los angelese, which have killed at least 11 people, continue to burn. 0ur neighbourhood and our neighbours have been eviscerated, it's really devastating to see generations of people's lives and livelihoods completely wiped out. rachel reeves becomes the most senior uk official to visit china for 7 years. she says that agreements reached with china are worth £600 million to the uk over the next five years. a french woman whose father was convicted last month in a mass rape trial tells the bbc he should never be released from jail. i was so close from my father, you can't imagine how hurt it is, it was a nightmare.