Iceland says it will be the first country in the world to make employers prove they offer equal pay regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or nationality.
The tiny Nordic nation's government says it will introduce an Equal Pay Standard requiring all employers with more than 25 staff to ensure they give equal pay for work of equal value.
Iceland wants to eradicate the gender pay gap by 2022.
Equality and Social Affairs Minister Thorsteinn Viglundsson said on Wednesday - International Women's Day - "the time is right to do something radical about this issue".
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In October, thousands of Icelandic women left work at 2.38pm to protest the gender pay gap.
Women's rights groups had calculated the pay gap meant that, after that time each day, women are working for nothing.
Equal pay has long been an issue of concern for the women of Iceland.
In 1975, declared a Women's Year by the United Nations, 90 per cent of the country's women went on strike to protest pay discrepancies, a protest model which was adopted for the "Day Without A Woman" International Women's Day protests across the US this year.
with AP