Chairwoman s address Women and miracles Well-known are the words of the leader who said that the question is not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. The campaign now being launched to encourage women s enterprise has a similar fundamental tone. This is not done primarily for women, but for the Icelandic economy, which needs all the creative powers that women harbour. We need all the innovative might residing in the nation in order to utilise our abundant opportunities for enterprise creation.
Many women hesitate to risk plunging their business ideas into action.
The reasons are diverse, but among the most important ones is the fact that women often lack confidence when it comes to finance and management. Many have therefore shied away from such tasks. Consequently, the economy misses out on their innovative energy, and the wheels of the economy, that women could get to turn and produce value, stay idle. In Iceland, barely a fifth of registered companies are owned by women, and only a small fraction of applications for loans or grants for enterprise creation come from women. This must be changed, and we intend to do so by demolishing the myth that women and finance do not go together.