In 2008, after years of free-market financial shell games led by a cadre of economists, bankers and politicians known as the Locomotive Group, Iceland’s economy crashed, hard. "When I traveled to Iceland this past summer," Janet Elise Johnson writes in her article in this week’s issue, "people—from a tour guide to those I met on the street—casually referred to those who colluded with the Locomotive Group as ‘the men who stole all our money.’"
The unexpected consequence of the country’s mishandled finances was a new-found appreciation of feminist policies and female leaders. "Iceland’s left government—a coalition of the Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green Movement—has passed a flurry of woman-friendly policies," Johnson writes, and is now led by a female prime minister and a female president of parliament. In this Nation Conversation, Johnson sits down with executive editor Betsy Reed to explain how the tiny Nordic country came to be the most feminist place on earth.
