Iceland
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AN 1 26
President Donald Trump sent the military into Venezuela to seize the then-sitting president and he has since decided that the U.S. will takeover the Arctic island Greenland. Now, the ambassador is making alleged jokes about Iceland, but the founding NATO member nation isn't laughing.
Politico reported Thursday that the Icelandic ambassador from the U.S. has been called to explain himself to those in Reykjavík fearful that they're next after Greenland.
Billy Long, who served as the head of the IRS for 53 days before he was shifted to the ambassador post, hasn't been confirmed by the Senate, but he's already at work with the volcanic island trying to become its next "governor." Long was on the floor of Congress Wednesday night when he commented to other colleagues that Iceland would be the next state and he'd be the leader of it.
“The Ministry for Foreign Affairs has contacted the U.S. Embassy in Iceland to verify the veracity of the alleged comments,” Iceland’s foreign ministry said in a statement to the site.
“These words of Billy Long, who Donald Trump has nominated as ambassador to Iceland, may have been said in half-hearted terms, but they are insulting to Iceland and Icelanders, who have had to fight for their freedom and have always been a friend of the United States,” a petition started by Icelanders said.
They are now calling on Long to be rejected as the ambassador of the island.
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https://theconversation.com/iceland-didnt-hunt-any-whales-in-2019-and-public-appetite-for-whale-meat-is-fading-127504
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2008 meltdown volcano
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andur formed 1 yr before. no "direct losses"
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2010 ted, merge 2014
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https://www.ted.com/talks/halla_tomasdottir
https://www.ted.com/talks/halla_tomasdottir/transcript
...So let me share with you our values. We believe in risk awareness. What does that mean? We believe that you should always understand the risks that you're taking, and we will not invest in things we don't understand. Not a complicated thing. But in 2007, at the height of the sub-prime and all the complicated financial structures, it was quite opposite to the reckless risk-taking behaviors that we saw on the market. We also believe in straight-talking, telling it as it is, using simple language that people understand, telling people about the downsides as well as the potential upsides, and even telling the bad news that no one wants to utter, like our lack of belief in the sustainability of the Icelandic financial sector that already we had months before the collapse hit us. And, although we do work in the financial sector, where Excel is king, we believe in emotional capital. And we believe that doing emotional due diligence is just as important as doing financial due diligence. It is actually people that make money and lose money, not Excel spreadsheets.
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04:30
(Applause)
04:32
Last, but not least, we believe in profit with principles. We care how we make our profit. So while we want to make economic profit for ourselves and our customers, we are willing to do it with a long-term view, and we like to have a wider definition of profits than just the economic profit in the next quarter. So we like to see profits, plus positive social and environmental benefits, when we invest.
04:57
But it wasn't just about the values, although we are convinced that they matter. It was also about a business opportunity. It's the female trend, and it's the sustainability trend, that are going to create some of the most interesting investment opportunities in the years to come. The whole thing about the female trend is not about women being better than men; it is actually about women being different from men, bringing different values and different ways to the table. So what do you get? You get better decision-making, and you get less herd behavior, and both of those things hit your bottom line with very positive results.
...But I'm more of the revolutionary, and I should be; I'm from Iceland. We have a long history of strong, courageous, independent women, ever since the Viking age. And I want to tell you when I first realized that women matter to the economy and to the society, I was seven -- it happened to be my mother's birthday -- October 24, 1975. Women in Iceland took the day off. From work or from home, they took the day off, and nothing worked in Iceland. (Laughter) They marched into the center of Reykjavik, and they put women's issues onto the agenda. And some say this was the start of a global movement. For me it was the start of a long journey, but I decided that day to matter. Five years later, Iceland elected Vigdis Finnbogadottir as their president -- first female to become head of state, single mom, a breast cancer survivor who had had one of her breasts removed. And at one of the campaign sessions, she had one of her male contenders allude to the fact that she couldn't become president -- she was a woman, and even half a woman. That night she won the election, because she came back -- not just because of his crappy behavior -- but she came back and said, "Well, I'm actually not going to breastfeed the Icelandic nation; I'm going to lead it."
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Bjork's on a quest to see Iceland take back its geothermal resources. see also here.
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2016 red herring
punches above it wt
Today IOC is home to over 25 startups, which Sigfusson says is “just the beginning.” Green tech will also play a big role in the cluster’s future, ensuring success in Iceland’s energy-driven economy.
Renewables have become a major avenue of exploration in Iceland, with firms such as XRG Power and Keynatura working to capitalize on the island’s abundance of biofuel, hydroelectric and geothermal energy. All of Iceland’s energy is renewable and it produces five times the need of its 323,002 citizens.
The country’s almost-equidistance between the U.S. and western Europe has made it not only an attractive tourist destination – the number of visitors has increased from just under half a million in 2010 to 1.3 million last year, and represents 31% of foreign exchange earnings – but reduces latency and time issues.
The lure of fueling data centers on clean energy is also tempting for tech’s major players. Many large brands, such as BMW, which announced that it pays 83% for data in Iceland than Germany, have arrived.
Iceland’s stringent data privacy laws, too, have piqued interest from individuals and companies alike (Iceland’s links to Wikileaks, Silk Road and the Pirate Bay have been well-documented). In December 2014 Birgitta Jónsdóttir, of the International Modern Media Institute, told Reuters that “Iceland should become for information what Switzerland is for money.”
Views on the government’s initiatives towards startups are mixed. Khamallakharan lauds its Innovation Bill, released just last month, which among other things makes tax reductions on investments, and taxes employee stock options at sale. Others, however, criticize the laws on server farms and foreign investment.
“There are government agencies that were created for the sole purpose of funding various tech projects and the overall positivity towards the startup scene is really good,” said Jonsson. “But I personally don’t believe government forerunners truly understand to what heights the Icelandic startup and tech scene could climb.”
Iceland has honed a reputation for high tech with VR and gaming companies CCP Games – maker of hit Eve Online – and Sólfar Studios raising $32 million last year. Khamallakharan points to Iceland’s education system, where “the enrollment and interest in software engineering, gaming and other technologies at the university level has skyrocketed,” as the main catalyst for this reputation.
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Iceland seems to be the most confused of nations when it comes to whales. On the one hand it attracts international tourists from all over the world to go out and see whales as part of their encounters with Iceland's many natural wonders. On the other hand it kills whales for profit, with some portion of the kill even being fed to some of the same tourists in restaurants and cafes.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/plastic-pollution-mcdonalds-2525962206.html
...In a separate announcement on Tuesday, McDonald's said it will add recycling to its more than 36,000 locations around the world by 2025 and pledges that all packaging on customer products will come from "renewable, recycled or certified sources" by that same year.
The moves from Iceland and McDonald's are very important. Sure, an individual's own efforts to reduce their plastic footprint makes a difference, but when global corporations also step up to reduce waste, it can make a big impact.
"The onus is on retailers, as leading contributors to plastic packaging pollution and waste, to take a stand and deliver meaningful change," Richard Walker, Iceland's managing director, said. "Other supermarkets, and the retail industry as a whole, should follow suit and offer similar commitments during 2018. This is a time for collaboration."
Iceland aims to become the first major retailer globally to eliminate plastic packaging from its own brand. Its new products will consist of paper or pulp trays food trays and paper bags instead of plastic ones. The items will be fully recyclable through domestic waste collection or in-store recycling facilities.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/realestate/commercial/iceland-recovers-and-reykjavik-becomes-a-hive-of-development.html
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crowdsources constitution
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http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-iceland-election-20161030-story.html
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the ere was no Pirate takeover, but the upstart party managed to make waves in Iceland.
The country's party leaders were beginning meetings Sunday with Iceland's president to hammer out who will form the next government, after an election that produced big gains for the radical Pirates but gave the largest bloc of seats to the center-right Independence Party.
Video: Iceland's Pirate Party Hopes to Win Big in the General Election
Some form of coalition government is certain since no party gained a parliamentary majority in an election overshadowed by public discontent at the establishment after years of financial crisis and political turmoil.
The conservative Independence Party took 29% of the vote and 21 of 63 parliament seats. Leader Bjarni Benediktsson said the party should be given a mandate by President Gudni Th. Johannesson to form a new coalition government.
Outgoing Prime Minister Sigurdur Ingi Johannsson of the Progressive Party said he would hand the president his resignation so that a new government can be formed.
The Pirates — anti-authoritarian advocates of direct democracy and digital freedom — almost tripled their vote share from 5% in 2013 to 14.5%, and will get 10 seats in Iceland's parliament, the Althingi.
The Left-Green movement, with 15.9%, will also get 10 seats in a parliament that is shaping up to be evenly split between parties of the left and the right.
The result was better than expected for the Independents, who have governed in coalition since 2013.
The Pirates' result fell short of what some polls had suggested — and what the party's fleet of energetic volunteers and supporters had hoped. Like Spain's Podemos or the movement behind Bernie Sanders in the U.S. presidential race, it drew in throngs of young supporters who ran the Pirates' largely volunteer-driven campaign.
"It would have been nice to get more MPs, to get a higher percentage," said Smari McCarthy, a newly elected Pirate lawmaker. "But considering everything, this is still a magnificent victory for us."
The election result looks set to trigger a period of intense political negotiations lasting days or weeks, and McCarthy suggested the Pirates have not given up on becoming part of a government.
"I don't think any party is looking at this outcome and saying this is going to be really easy," McCarthy said. "I think in particular the Independence Party is going to have a very hard time trying to build a stable government."
A wind-lashed volcanic island near the Arctic Circle with a population of 320,000, Iceland suffered years of economic upheaval after the country's debt-swollen banks collapsed during the 2008 global financial crisis.
Saturday's election was called after then-Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned in April during public protests over his offshore holdings, revealed in the Panama Papers leak.
Gunnlaugsson's Progressive Party was the election's biggest casualty, losing more than half its seats in the Althingi as voters punished it for its links to the financial crash and corruption claims.
"The party that to my knowledge was most responsible for the ongoing crisis and the scandals and scams is mostly out, and that is progress and that is great," said Reykjavik voter Evard Ingolfsson, 23.
New parties made gains among weary voters. A kingmaker in government negotiations could be Vidreisn, or Renewal, a liberal party formed this year that advocates Iceland joining the European Union. It won 10.5% of the vote and seven parliament seats. Its leader Benedict Johannesson told broadcaster RUV that, as the party that had made the biggest gains, it should get to lead talks on forming a new government.
The election was dominated by Iceland's economy — now recovering on the back of a tourism boom, with low unemployment and high growth — and voters' desire for political reform.
Iceland's Pirate Party, founded four years ago by an assortment of hackers, political activists and Internet freedom advocates, campaigned on promises to introduce direct democracy, subject the workings of government to more scrutiny and place the country's natural resources under public ownership.
The party also backs tough rules to protect individuals from online intrusion. Birgitta Jonsdottir, the Pirates' most senior lawmaker is a former ally of WikiLeaks who has called on Iceland to offer citizenship to U.S. National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden.
Opponents argued that the inexperienced Pirates could scare off investors and destabilize the economy — a message that resonated with some voters.
Eva Heida Onnudottir, a political scientist at the University of Iceland, said that while the election didn't bring a Pirate revolution, it did see the emergence of new parties, a decline in support for traditional ones, and a record number of seats for women — 30 out of 63.
"The changes are not maybe as much as some people would like, but politics in Iceland has definitely changed," she said.
Pirate lawmaker Jonsdottir said the party was buoyed by the election result, and would continue its drive to curb corruption and bring people-powered politics to Iceland.
"We're very happy that we actually managed to get this far by being so totally different," she said. "We are an innovative party that is trying new methods, and we took a lot of risks in order to stay true to ourselves.
"So the people that actually voted for us are really Pirates in their hearts."
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http://www.democracynow.org/2016/4/6/panama_papers_could_pirate_party_co
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19. The Power of Peaceful Revolution in Iceland
Iceland is experiencing one of the greatest economic comebacks of all time, reported Alex Pietrowski.
After privatization of the nation’s banking sector, completed in 2000, private bankers borrowed $120 billion (ten times the size of Iceland’s economy), creating a huge economic bubble that doubled housing prices and made a small percentage of the country’s population exceedingly wealthy. When the bubble burst, the bankers left the nation on the verge of bankruptcy and its citizens with an unpayable debt.
In October 2008, Iceland’s people took to the streets in response to the economic crisis caused by the banksters. Over a span of five months, the main bank of Iceland was nationalized, government officials were forced to resign, the old government was liquidated, and a new government was established. By March 2010, Iceland’s people voted to deny payment of the 3,500 million debt created by the bankers, and about200 high-level executives and bankers responsible for the economic crisis in the country were either arrested or faced criminal charges.
In February 2011, a new constitutional assembly settled in to rewrite the tiny nation’s constitution, which aimed to avoid entrapment by debt-based currency foreign loans. In 2012, the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development expected Iceland’s economy to outgrow the euro and the average for the developed world.
Censored #19
The Power of Peaceful Revolution in Iceland
Alex Pietrowski, “Iceland’s Hördur Torfason—How to Beat the Banksters,” Waking Times, December 11, 2012, http://www.wakingtimes.com/2012/12/11/icelands-hordur-torfason-how-to-beat-the-banksters.
Student Researcher: Pedro Martin Del Campo (Sonoma State University)
Faculty Evaluator: Ed Beebout (Sonoma State University)
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https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/06/iceland-women-government-better-for-mothers-america-lessons
guk no lnx many
There's proof: electing women radically improves life for mothers and families
When Iceland elected a female president in 1980, it set off a domino effect that turned it into one of the most egalitarian countries. What can the US learn?
America is failing mothers. Help us change that
Alexandra Topping
Thu 7 Dec 2017 07.00 GMT Last modified on Tue 6 Mar 2018 20.34 GMT
When Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, a divorced single mother, ran for president of Iceland in 1980, women made up only 5% of parliamentarians in the Nordic country.
“I never thought I would win,” she says, sitting in the modernist architectural splendor of the University of Iceland multicultural institute that bears her name in Reykjavik. “I just wanted to prove a woman could run.”
But in August of that year, she became the first female elected head of state anywhere in the world. Reflecting on the impact of her 16-year tenure, she has no time for false modesty.
“If I may say so, because I hear it all the time, it changed everything,” says the 87-year-old. “Women thought, if she can, I can. In my advanced age, women still thank me for being a role model.”
In this small nation, there is a near-unquestioned conviction based on decades of evidence that electing women to positions of power benefits women and families. And at a time when American women, galvanized by the election of Donald Trump, are showing unprecedented interest in entering the political arena themselves, Iceland can provide both a roadmap and a promise for what’s possible.
Iceland’s lesson for America is clear: when women win elections, everyone wins.
“There is absolutely no doubt that there is an equivalency between more gender-balanced political representation and better policies for women,” says Brynhildur Heiðar, executive manager of the Icelandic Women’s Rights Association. “Parental leave, daycare, the gender pay gap – none of these were seen as major issues before women ran for parliament.”
After Finnbogadóttir made history in 1980, female political participation in Iceland soared, leading it to become the most gender-equal parliament in the world among countries without a quota system. Even after a sharp drop following a snap election in October, women still make up 38.6% of the governing body – and this month feminist Katrín Jakobsdóttir emerged as its new prime minister.
It’s no coincidence that last year Iceland was ranked the most gender equal country in the world by the World Economic Forum – for the ninth time – and the Economist recently named it the world’s best place for working women.
By contrast, after the 2016 election, the US dropped from 52nd to a dismal 104th in the world for women’s political representation. Today, women hold just 19.6% of the seats in Congress – 21.0% in the Senate and 19.3% in the House of Representatives.
There’s a sense of urgency among women to both fix what is broken and provide their experience and perspective
[Erin Loos Cutraro, founder of She Should Run
The US also remains the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee workers paid maternity leave. Full-time childcare costs 85% of the median rent in some regions. And the country has the worst maternal death rate in the developed world.
It’s injustices like these that have stoked growing political activism among liberal American women. Emerge America, which aims to boost the number of Democratic women running for office, has reported an 87% increase in applications to its training programs. Emily’s List, an organization dedicated to helping elect pro-choice Democratic women, said more than 22,000 women have expressed interest in running for office since the election – up from less than 1,000 women in the year before. In Virginia, the 100-member house of delegates will jump from 17 female members to 28 next year, including the first two Latinas to hold seats in the Virginia assembly.
“There is definitely momentum,” says Erin Loos Cutraro, founder of She Should Run. “There’s a sense of urgency among women to both fix what is broken and provide their experience and perspective to create healthier government.”
Research supports this urgency: A paper by Georgetown University political scientist Michele Swers found that liberal female legislators co-sponsored an average of 10.6 bills related to women’s health – an average of 5.3 more than their liberal male colleagues. (Incidentally, a Stanford University study also showed that female Congress members simply get more stuff done – passing, on average, twice as many bills as male legislators in one analyzed session of Congress.)
The link between legislators and female-friendly and family-friendly policies is long accepted in Iceland, says Heiðar. “From our perspective there is no doubt that women in parliament drive policy for women.”
A historical look at key policies in the nation appears to back this up. In the 1990s, full-time, highly subsidised daycare became available for all children aged two and older after the election of several parliamentarians from the Women’s Alliance, a women-centred political party, and the election of Finnbogadóttir the decade before.
In 2000, by which time a third of MPs were women, a new law introduced a nine-month parental leave, which gave both mothers and fathers three months of paid leave each, plus an additional three months to split between them. At the time it was the longest amount of paid leave given to fathers anywhere in the world. “It changed society overnight,” says Ólafur Stephensen, secretary general of the Icelandic Federation of Trade and a father of two.
The next big push came after the 2008 financial crisis, which saw Iceland’s banking system collapse, creating a severe economic depression. In the election that followed in 2009, women took 43% of the seats, and Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became the country’s first female prime minister – and the world’s first openly lesbian head of government.
Icelandic women aren’t here because it was handed to us – we had to fight all the way, and we are still fighting
Auður Styrkársdóttir, Iceland’s Women’s History Archive
“Because things were such a mess in 2009, the increase in women went almost unnoticed,” says Heiðar. “But we went from being a ‘normal’ democracy to a gender-equal parliament overnight – it was a fantastic victory.” The country briefly achieved gender parity in 2016, 101 years after Icelandic women first got the vote.
In the years that followed, new laws introduced quotas for women on company boards, a ban on strip clubs and the purchase of sex, the removal of perpetrators of domestic violence from the family, and a recent push to make employers prove equal pay.
Female political representation empowers other women at the top of other fields too, says Sigríður Björk Guðjónsdóttir, Reykjavik’s first female chief of police. Since ascending to the post in 2014, she has made violence against women and girls a priority.
So can American women take any messages of hope from this pioneering micro-state of 330,000 people?
[pix Sigríður Björk Guðjónsdóttir, Reykjavik’s first female chief of police.
Auður Styrkársdóttir, former director of Iceland’s Women’s History Archive, can see some parallels between the Women’s March on Washington – which saw 500,000 people descend on the US capital and another 1.5 million join them in hundreds of cities across the world – andIceland’s 1975 Women’s Day Off, which experts cite as a momentous event in the fight for women’s rights.
On that day, a fifth of the country’s female population, about 25,000 women, gathered on the streets of Reykjavik to protest about low pay, lack of political representation, and domestic drudgery. At the same time, an estimated 90% of Iceland’s female population went on all-out professional and domestic strike throughout the country. “It was a turning point for everybody,” says Styrkársdóttir.
[Finland: the only country where fathers spend more time with kids than mothers
Read more]
If the tiny nation has anything to teach the States, it is this: don’t give up. “Just keep going,” says Styrkársdóttir. “Icelandic women aren’t here because it was handed to us – we had to fight all the way, and we are still fighting.”
And even in a country with as proud a heritage of gender equality as Iceland, progress can falter. As well as the drop in female politicians in the last election, the gender pay gap is still 16%. Professions remain starkly gendered. And the number of men taking paternity leave has been falling, from 90% in 2008 to 74% in 2016, after the country lowered the amount of money fathers can collect following the economic crisis.
Iceland is lucky, perhaps, that it has champions like Finnbogadóttir to encourage a younger army of women to carry on the fight.
“I think this current result is a coincidence and I think next time it will be better,” she says, steely-eyed. While equality in political representation is not mandated here, it has come to be expected, she adds. “It is not a law, but it is what is morally acceptable. We need women in power – in society, when women have a voice, everything changes.”
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http://www.projectcensored.org/9-icelanders-vote-include-commons-constitution/
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https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/**2009**/feb/22/iceland-women
guk no lnx
After the crash, Iceland's women lead the rescue
This article is more than 10 years old
Iceland's spectacular meltdown was caused by a banking and business culture that was buccaneering, reckless - and overwhelmingly male. Business editor Ruth Sunderland travelled to Reykjavik to meet the women now running the country, and heard how they are determined to reinvent business and society by injecting values of openness, fairness and social responsibility
Ruth Sunderland
Sun 22 Feb 2009 00.01 GMT First published on Sun 22 Feb 2009 00.01 GMT
Johanna Sigurdardottir is expected to become Iceland's prime minister
On Bondadagur, or Husband's Day, the menfolk of Iceland are spoiled by their wives and girlfriends, who serve them with traditional delicacies such as ram's testicles and sheep's head jelly, a recipe for which is handily included in the latest online edition of Iceland Review, alongside the latest bulletins on the economic meltdown.
Icelandic women, however, are more likely to be studying the financial news than the recipes - and more likely to be thinking about how to put right the mess their men have made of the banking system than about cooking them comfort food. The tiny nation, with a population of just over 300,000 people, has been overwhelmed by an economic disaster that is threatening its very survival. But for a generation of fortysomething women, the havoc is translating into an opportunity to step into the positions vacated by the men blamed for the crisis, and to play a leading role in creating a more balanced economy, which, they argue, should incorporate overtly feminine values.
The ruling male elite is scarcely in a position to argue. The krona has collapsed; interest rates and inflation have soared; companies and households which have borrowed in foreign currency are overwhelmed by their debts and unemployment is at record levels. An exodus of young people is feared from the capital only recently held up as a centre of cutting-edge cool. Walking along Laugavegur, touted until a year or so ago as the Bond Street of Reykjavik, the gloom is palpable.
The idea that Reykjavik, an attractive, low-rise provincial place, could be a financial nerve centre on a par with the gleaming skyscrapers of Canary Wharf and Wall Street now seems utterly absurd. Over the past 10 years, however, little Iceland became a test-bed for the new economic order. Led by businessmen such as Baugur boss Jón Asgeir Jóhannesson, a nation previously best known for cod and hot springs reinvented itself as an Atlantic tiger. The Icelanders bought stakes in huge tracts of the British high street, including House of Fraser, Whistles and Karen Millen. Their banks were equally buccaneering, adopting free market reforms with gusto and moving with relish into financial engineering. The upshot: they now owe at least six times the country's income for 2008 and have been taken into state hands.
Unlike in the UK, Iceland's women are at the forefront of the clean-up. The crisis led to the downfall of the government and the prime minister's residence - which resembles a slightly over-sized white dormer bungalow - is now occupied by Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, an elegant 66-year-old lesbian who is the world's first openly gay premier. When she lost a bid to lead her party in the 1990s, she lifted her fist and declared: "My time will come." Her hour has now arrived - and the same is true for a cadre of highly accomplished businesswomen.
Prominent among them are Halla Tómasdóttir and Kristin Petursdóttir, the founders of Audur Capital, who have teamed up with the singer Björk to set up an investment fund to boost the ravaged economy by investing in green technology. Petursdóttir, a former senior banking executive, and Tómasdóttir, the former managing director of the Iceland Chamber of Commerce, decided just before the crunch to set up a firm bringing female values into the mainly male spheres of private equity, wealth management and corporate advice.
Tómasdóttir says: "Our Björk fund is to focus on sustainable growth. Iceland was the first in the world into the crisis, but we could be the first out, and women have a big role to play in that. It goes back to our Viking women. While the men were out there raping and pillaging, the women were running the show at home.
"We have five core feminine values. First, risk awareness: we will not invest in things we don't understand. Second, profit with principles- we like a wider definition so it is not just economic profit, but apositive social and environmental impact. Third, emotional capital. When we invest, we do an emotional due diligence - or check on the company - we look at the people, at whether the corporate culture is an asset or a liability.
Fourth, straight talking. We believe the language of finance should be accessible, and not part of the alienating nature of banking culture. Fifth, independence. We would like to see women increasingly financially independent, because with that comes the greatest freedom to be who you want to be, but also unbiased advice."
Men are in a minority at Audur, but Tómasdóttir is keen to hire more. "There are fewer of them, but they are not tokens, we have hired them on merit. Now, if we have two equally competent people, we would positively discriminate in favour of the man because we want balance," she says, without a flicker of irony.
Even before the credit crunch, Iceland scored highly on measures of sex equality, coming fourth out of 130 countries on the international gender gap index (behind Norway, Finland and Sweden). The rate of female participation in the labour force runs at more than 80%, compared with just over 90% for men; there is generous maternity and childcare provision from the state, along with paternity leave. Most Icelanders remain geographically close to their extended families, making childcare easier, and the distances in Reykjavik are small, so mothers can easily get to their children's schools in a crisis.
Differences between Iceland and the UK are immediately obvious at all levels: the drivers of the coaches taking me to and from the airport were both female, the massage therapist at the female-friendly health spa, male. Similarly the debate about how - rather than whether - women should participate in the reconstruction of Iceland's shattered financial system is a mainstream discussion, whereas it is seen as a fringe issue here.
This egalitarian backdrop has given Icelandic businesswomen a self-confidence their equivalents in the UK quite simply lack, according to one senior British female executive who frequently does deals with Reykjavik.
"There is never a problem with me being a woman, whereas in the UK there is always an undercurrent. Most Icelandic men genuinely view women as equal. They are not shackled with our social and class history, and they don't have all-boys public schools which breed chauvinism. Corporate women in the UK can be very aggressive, because they are defensive and because they have to be. I'm sure Icelandic women will play an even bigger role now because the men have so spectacularly fucked up. We have a lot to learn from them, but we are so entrenched I don't know if it will ever happen."
Jóhanna Waagfjörd, 50, the chief executive of Hagar, which invests in food and fashion retail, is an economist by training. Perched in her third-floor office above the shops in the pristine but near-deserted Smaralind shopping mall in Reykjavik, wearing a chic white shirt and trim fitting jeans, she, like the other Icelandic business women I encounter, looks a good decade younger than her years. If she looks nothing like the standard-issue British woman boss in her sober dress or a navy skirt suit, she sounds nothing like them either. While senior women in the UK are extremely reluctant to introduce feminine, let alone feminist, themes into the conversation, Waagfjörd and her Icelandic sisters talk openly about the womanly and maternal qualities they bring to the boardroom table.
"I don't have children - I decided that because I wanted to be free to pursue my career - but motherhood is a value for all women. Ten or 15 years ago I wouldn't have wanted to say that motherhood was something important, because that was not the rule of the game. But the value you bring as a woman is the maternal aspect, the strength that comes from motherhood."
Tómasdóttir, whose company shares a name with her five-year-old daughter, agrees. "Audur was one of our foremost Viking women, the name means wisdom, strength and happiness, and a clear space. We talk of the company as a daughter."
Tómasdóttir is also unabashed at promoting middle-aged women as a force for good in the boardroom - a taboo in this country, where female executives are more likely to be grabbing, panic-stricken, at the anti-ageing creams than celebrating their midlife energy surge. "I have recently turned 40 and Kristin is 43. We are going through a midlife transition; for men it is a midlife crisis. At 40 most women undergo a self-exploration, and they look at everything: they look at their body and ask, 'am I in the shape I want to be?' They look at their husband, and ask: 'Is this the guy I want to spend the rest of my life with?', and they look at their career and ask: 'Is this really satisfying?' You get to the point where you see there is emotional capital that is never measured or valued in the way it should be. I just want to live in congruence with that side of myself."
The British businesswoman, who, tellingly, prefers to remain anonymous, says this Icelandic attitude to midlife femininity is unimaginable in the British boardroom. "I am in the same age bracket and I cannot conceive of discussing the positive power of the fortyish woman with male colleagues," she says. "They would freak out."
Waagfjörd points a finger at young, inexperienced men who, she says, became too dominant in the boom. "I was in the US for six years, and when I came back 10 years ago, at the age of 40, things had really changed. Suddenly there were a lot of young men about 35 or 30. They used to call to try to sell me derivatives which were really complicated. They thought they were really clever, but they were still living at home with their parents."
Elín Jónsdóttir, a 42-year-old lawyer with two children, worked at the Icelandic financial regulator until 2005 and is now managing director of Arev, an investment firm set up by Jón Scheving Thorsteinsson, the former chief executive of Baugur UK. She believes the boom and bust is not a men versus women situation but a question of different value systems. "During the boom we saw what we would typically say are masculine values, but it is dangerous to stereotype. These so-called masculine values are common in women as well, and the variability within each group is much larger then the variability between the groups."
Nonetheless she believes Icelanders accept women will play a major role in the reconstruction of the economy. "We all feel it is strange when you looked at the banks and the directors were all male, and this is in Iceland where female participation in the workplace is higher than anywhere else in the world. We are beginning to look at companies as old-fashioned if they have only male directors. There is still a bit of a boys' club, with women as outsiders - people know the rules and are comfortable with that - no one was asking the difficult questions. But the boardroom should not necessarily be too comfortable."
Although there is a group of self-confident women taking centre stage in Iceland, the country is still far from being a businesswoman's Utopia. Hrund Rudolfsdóttir, a 40-year-old mother of three, is a director of Milestone, a company specialising in strategic investments in financial services, and sits on the board of Iceland's confederation of employers. She is concerned that, although women her age may benefit from the crisis, younger women could suffer. "Women of my generation with experience will see more opportunities than ever before, because now the whole nation has realised how important it is that you have a diverse group of managers who can ask critical questions. We are seeing unemployment on a big scale for the first time. Young women who should be making their way into middle management may be pushed back. After they have their children they might find it hard to get back into the job market, and some women may choose to opt out."
There is also a fear of the "glass cliff": the worry that, if women do win top jobs, they will inherit very difficult situations, some will inevitably fail, and the cause of equality will be set back. Research from Exeter University has found that companies are more likely to appoint a woman when they are experiencing a crisis, because they are seen as more consensual and less abrasive, though these qualities are not valued so highly at other times. The danger is that, if women become associated with failure, it could actually hinder their advancement. But as Rudolfsdóttir says: "There is a risk, but as women we cannot claim we are capable and then turn away because of that risk."
As the Icelanders are discovering, it can be hard to find women who are entirely unbesmirched by the crisis, since those of sufficient seniority to be credible leaders have themselves come up through the old system; of the two women recently promoted to run Iceland's nationalised banks, Landsbanki and Glitnir, one has already been elbowed aside for these reasons.
Not everyone in Iceland has bought into the idea that women will revolutionise capitalism. "Women would like to think it's their turn now, but it won't be - there will be a bit of fuss for a while but men will keep the real power at the top," said a local taxi driver in his sixties. "I'm not giving you my name, though, because my wife speaks English and she would kill me if she read that."
That is not a view that gains much traction with Halla Tómasdóttir. "If the institutions are under the control of a single group - and now it is men - and they all think the same way, we are not going to make positive changes. For the first time in 100 years we have the chance to create a company, a society, a country, and hopefully a world that is more sustainable, more fair for men as well as women. If we are not going to do that now, then when will we?"
==
Auður Capital was a financial service company, founded in 2007 by two Icelandic businesswomen, with the aim of incorporating feminine values into finance. Halla Tómasdóttir was Auður's executive chairman and Kristín Pétursdóttir was the company CEO.
The company offered wealth management, private equity advice and corporate advice. It attempted to correct what it perceived as a historic lack of balance and diversity in the financial sector. The founders blamed the 2007 financial downturn on high risk behavior, short term orientation and a narrow definition of results which had driven the financial sector for the past years.
Auður succeeded in preserving the funds of its clients when the Icelandic banks collapsed in October 2008.
In December 2008 Auður announced the launching of BJÖRK, a private equity fund, established by Auður Capital and the renowned musician Björk Guðmundsdóttir, who is an active supporter of entrepreneurship, creative thinking and increased diversity in the Icelandic economy. The aim of the BJÖRK venture fund was to invest in early-stage corporations, with high growth potential capitalizing on Iceland's human and/or natural resources, as well as emphasizing sustainability and a triple bottom line.
Auður received significant international attention. The Auður story has been featured by the BBC,[1] New York Magazine,[2] The Guardian,[3] and The Financial Times,[4] among others. Halla Tomasdóttir spoke at the 2010 TED Women's Conference on her financial philosophy.[5]
Merger in 2014
Auður Capital started its operations in 2007 and merged with the financial services firm Virðing in January 2014. The merged company operates under the name Virðing.
The Icelandic Competition Authority authorized the merger at the end of 2013[6] as well as the Icelandic Financial Supervisory Authority in January 2014.[7]
Virðing owns the Auður Capital brand and operates several private equity funds using the "Auður" name.
References
- "BBC News - The women who want to save banking". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 4 February 2015.
- "What If Women Ran Wall Street?". NYMag.com. Retrieved 4 February 2015.
- Ruth Sunderland. "After the crash, Iceland's women lead the rescue". the Guardian. Retrieved 4 February 2015.
- Financial Times, May 27, 2009 Archived July 22, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
- http://www.ted.com/talks/halla_tomasdottir.html TED, November 18, 2013
- http://www.samkeppni.is/media/akvardanir-2013/akvordun_3613_Samruni_Virdingar_og_Audar_Capital.pdf ICA, December 20, 2013
- http://www.fme.is/utgefid-efni/frettir-og-tilkynningar/frettir/nr/2011 FSA, January 22, 2014.
External links
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After the crash, Iceland's women lead the rescue | World news | The ...
https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2009/feb/22/iceland-women
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1975 Icelandic women's strike - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Icelandic_women%27s_strike
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History · Women's Day Off · Aftermath
Women in Iceland - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Iceland
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Females over 25 with secondary education**: 9...
Women in labour force: 79%
Women in parliament: 38%
There's proof: electing women radically improves life for mothers and ...
https://yyytheguardian.com/.../iceland-women-government-better-for-mothers-amer...
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Women in Iceland - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Iceland
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Females over 25 with secondary education**: 9...
Women in labour force: 79%
Women in parliament: 38%
Women's suffrage · 1975 women's strike · Education and employment
Audur Capital - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audur_Capital
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Iceland ranks high for gender equality - Business Insider
https://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-gender-equality-2018-2
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A Nordic revolution: The heroines of Reykjavik | The Independent
https://www.independent.co.uk › News › World › Europe
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Women to the rescue in Iceland | Public Radio International
https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-06-30/women-rescue-iceland
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Opinion | Give Women a Chance, and They Will Change the World ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/.../johanna-sigurdardottir-give-women-a-chance.html
Sep 16, 2018 - When the last financial crisis rocked Iceland, women proved to be wiser than ... She was the first woman to serve in the role, from 2009 to 2013. ... There were hardly any women among the managers of the Icelandic banks that ...
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Cleaning Up the Men's Mess: Iceland's Women Reach for Power ...
https://www.spiegel.de/.../cleaning-up-the-men-s-mess-iceland-s-women-reach-for-powe...
Apr 22, 2009 - Iceland's women are blaming men for the financial crisis that has brought the country ... They are now looking for a female solution to clean up the mess. ... at the British subsidiary of the crisis-stricken Icelandic bank Kaupthing.
Iceland's First Woman PM Releases Biography - The Reykjavik ...
https://grapevine.is/news/2017/.../icelands-first-woman-pm-releases-biography-today/
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