Last week, Unnur Brá Konráðsdóttir, an MP with the conservative Independence party took to the podium at the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, to speak about a bill she wrote. Not international news by any stretch, except for the fact that she breastfed her baby while she did it.

“It is the most natural thing in the world,” Konráðsdóttir told the Independent, after the news footage went viral, describing being a mother as “like any job, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do”.

What a win for feminism! Women can truly have it all! Want to be a mother and strip asylum seekers of rights in parliament? Go for it! The sky’s the limit!

What a woman was doing with her body was supposedly more important to international discourse than what she was saying

What was that? Oh right, yes that little detail was dropped from most of the reporting on the subject. The bill Konráðsdóttir was arguing for will deny some asylum seekers in Iceland the right to delay deportation while they appeal against their case decisions. This means deported asylum seekers will have to appeal from abroad, forcing them into a great logistical and financial disadvantage.

But instead, international media were so busy praising Konráðsdóttir’s identity as a mother, her identity as a politician trying to whip up some support for a bill that caters to Iceland’s very own “basket of deplorables” two weeks before a national election fell by the wayside.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that she breastfed. I am an Icelandic mother, I breastfed my child everywhere without hesitation or shame because that’s just how we roll and I’m proud we have built this kind of society where breastfeeding isn’t remotely controversial. Plop! Out flops the boob over a cappuccino with friends. I was that woman.

But as a feminist, I can’t not be critical of the fact that once again, despite the best liberal intentions, what a woman was doing with her body was supposedly more important to international discourse than what she was saying.

And what Konráðsdóttir was talking about highlights one of Iceland’s greatest shames, the Directorate of Immigration.

A recent in-depth report by investigative journalist, Paul Fontaine, shows the directorate’s policies are applied selectively but most often a person’s asylum in Iceland is dependent on the Dublin regulation, which is frequently employed to reject cases and deport people without even examining whether their cases have merit.

Meaning the Directorate of Immigration, mired by increasing workloads, dwindling resources and fear has long advocated a no-tolerance policy and has repeatedly violated international agreements regarding the treatment of asylum seekers.

Here’s an anecdote that might have passed you by from Euro 2016. During Iceland’s match against England, while all of Iceland was glued to their screens, the Directorate of Immigration had police forcibly drag a 16-year-old Iraqi teenager from the church where he’d sought sanctuary. The police handcuffed him and deported him and another Iraqi man to Norway where they were imprisoned awaiting their return to Iraq. An opportune moment, as the celebrations drowned out the uproar.

What society lets families fear deportation for sending children to school? Read more

Lest we forget the former minister of the interior, Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir, whose ministry leaked a document containing gross falsehoods about the asylum seeker Tony Omos to the press. Implying he was a criminal, courting public favour for his deportation. The documents were proven false but Omos still got deported and Kristjánsdóttir managed to cling to the office for a full year afterwards. A year.

Recently, the Ministry of the Interior, run by a minister linked to the Panama Papers, backed the Directorate of Immigration’s policy of restricting access to asylum seekers, enforcing rules that forbid journalists and volunteers from visiting them, further isolating them from Icelandic society, hiding them from public view. In response to public outcry the Directorate of Immigration cited “humanitarian reasons” for the restrictions.

And all of this is at odds with what we Icelanders think of ourselves; we think we are inclusive and progressive and yet the Independence party is leading the polls. The party whose MPs have been running and backing this dysfunctional institution could win the election later this month.

But that’s what’s great about feminism. It’s for everyone, even women who enjoy its privileges while restricting the rights of asylum seekers. And in turn, that’s what’s great about the patriarchy: it will sideline the clampdown human rights in favour of a woman with her tit out on the telly.