They married and Reid was building a career as a journalist when, in April 2016, political turmoil in Iceland unexpectedly landed her historian husband in the spotlight. Jóhannesson’s charismatic television appearances commentating on the Panama Papers scandal sparked a public clamor for him to run for office. By June, he had clinched the presidency.
“I was all of a sudden thrust on the national stage as somebody's wife,” said Reid. “[A]nd although I'm very proud to be Guđni's wife, it's not my defining characteristic as a human being,” she added.
Reid said that while it was an honor to serve as her adoptive country's first lady, as a feminist with her own career, she felt called to break free of the stereotypical first lady role. Reid praised Iceland’s commitment to gender equality for making it easier to do so.
“Iceland is the closest country in the world to closing the gender gap. If there's anywhere where we can push back against some outdated expectations for female spouses of male heads of state, Iceland is it,” Reid said. The former first lady noted that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the day that 90 percent of Icelandic women took the day off in protest, resulting in a national commerce shutdown and a win for women’s rights.
However, Reid said that gender equality globally is not happening fast enough, and in fact a current global backlash against gender equality – including in Iceland – calls for vigilance and a conscious effort to promote diverse voices. “It's thinking about how we're creating committees, and teams, and what we're consuming, [including] whether we're reading books written by women,” Reid said. Reid believes that women possess unique storytelling powers. “Women in some sense I feel, in families, are the keepers of the stories,” she said.
Reid’s first book, “Secrets of the Sprakkar: Iceland’s Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World,” explored Iceland’s penchant for gender equality through interviews with a wide range of extraordinary, yet ordinary, women. It became a bestseller in Canada and Iceland.
The former first lady is currently finishing a memoir of her time as first lady of Iceland that Reid said “is really about an ordinary woman who ended up in an extraordinary position, and the honor of that – and how I tried to make the most of that unexpected opportunity.”
