Marketing women in Iceland: challenges of establishing a company

Objectives: This paper explores the experiences of nine Icelandic business women who that have their own marketing businesses. In recent years more women graduated from Icelandic universities than men (Statistic Iceland, 2012a) where business and marketing studies have proved popular. Little is known though about the experiences of Icelandic women moving into self-employment in marketing, particularly in relation to challenges of setting up and managing their own business. Iceland provides a unique context as it is a small island with only 325.000 habitants (Statistic Iceland, 2014). The country was hit badly by the economic crisis in 2008 which is likely to have affected the career and business decisions of self-employed women. Prior Work: Marketing is considered to be a female-oriented industry but experiences of women working in marketing are an under-researched area (Maclaren and Catterall, 2000). In addition, Marlow et al.,(2009) called for studies focusing on the challenges of the entrepreneurial environment for women. Some of the challenges that women owning their own business have to face have been identified as capitalisation, working hours and location (Carter et al., 2001; Roper and Scott, 2009; Harding, 2006). These experiences will be discussed in this paper. Approach: This paper builds on work from a similar study already undertaken in the UK by Foster and Brindley (2010); Foster et al., (2011) and Wheatley at al., (2011) and their investigation of marketing businesses in the UK but explores the experiences in the novel context of Iceland which is a much smaller economy and often heralded as a beacon of gender equality (Petterson 2012; Acthenhagen and Tilmar, 2013). The study takes an exploratory, qualitative approach. Convenience sampling was used for the study with nine Icelandic women who owned a marketing business. All the interviews were conducted with the owner of the company using a set of questions around a priori themes drawn from the literature. The interviews took place in August 2013. Results: Preliminary analysis indicates that Icelandic women are cautious when it comes to capitalisation. They are quite reluctant to take out a loan to finance their business. In addition the majority seemed to work long hours, often nights and weekends. Full findings will be presented at the conference. Implications: These findings give the first account of experiences of Icelandic self-employed women in marketing and answers recent calls for studies in the field of marketing and the entrepreneur environment for women (Maclaren and Catterall, 2000; Marlow et al.,2009). Value: This paper provides an insight into the experiences of the Icelandic business women working in marketing. In addition it offers comparisons with previous studies conducted in the UK

An exploration of Icelandic marketing entrepreneurs

Little research have focused on women entrepreneurship in Iceland and yet it is often heralded as a beacon of gender equality (Pettersson, 2012; Achtenhagen and Tilmar, 2013; Smith-Hunter, 2013). The World Economic Forum (2013) identified Iceland as the country with the world's smallest gender gap. This small gender gap is not reflected in the entrepreneurship figures which show that only 8 percent of Icelandic women are classed as entrepreneurs (GEM, 2009) compared to 15 percent of men. Furthermore, Danson and Burnett (2013) posited that entrepreneurship in island environments is an under-researched area. It is therefore pertinent to explore what is happening in terms of women’s entrepreneurship in Iceland. The paper builds upon similar studies already undertaken in the UK and Europe (see Foster et al., 2011 and Wheatley et al, 2011) that have investigated the careers of marketing professionals through their life-courses. Marketing is considered to be a feminised industry in Iceland yet there is little knowledge about the careers these women have in the profession or why they decide to become self- employed. The findings showed the most often women became self-employed because of a trigger event and it seemed in most cases to be the financial crises in 2008

Does abortion reduce self-esteem and life satisfaction?

PurposeThis study aims to assess the effects of obtaining an abortion versus being denied an abortion on self-esteem and life satisfaction.MethodsWe present the first 2.5 years of a 5-year longitudinal telephone-interview study that follows 956 women who sought an abortion from 30 facilities across the USA. We examine the self-esteem and life satisfaction trajectories of women who sought and received abortions just under the facility's gestational age limit, of women who sought and received abortions in their first trimester of pregnancy, and of women who sought abortions just beyond the facility gestational limit and were denied an abortion. We use adjusted mixed effects linear regression analyses to assess whether the trajectories of women who sought and obtained an abortion differ from those who were denied one.ResultsWomen denied an abortion initially reported lower self-esteem and life satisfaction than women who sought and obtained an abortion. For all study groups, except those who obtained first trimester abortions, self-esteem and life satisfaction improved over time. The initially lower levels of self-esteem and life satisfaction among women denied an abortion improved more rapidly reaching similar levels as those obtaining abortions at 6 months to one year after abortion seeking. For women obtaining first trimester abortions, initially higher levels of life satisfaction remained steady over time.ConclusionsThere is no evidence that abortion harms women's self-esteem or life satisfaction in the short term

Prompt energization of relativistic and highly relativistic electrons during a substorm interval: Van Allen Probes observations

Abstract On 17 March 2013, a large magnetic storm significantly depleted the multi-MeV radiation belt. We present multi-instrument observations from the Van Allen Probes spacecraft Radiation Belt Storm Probe A and Radiation Belt Storm Probe B at ~6 Re in the midnight sector magnetosphere and from ground-based ionospheric sensors during a substorm dipolarization followed by rapid reenergization of multi-MeV electrons. A 50% increase in magnetic field magnitude occurred simultaneously with dramatic increases in 100 keV electron fluxes and a 100 times increase in VLF wave intensity. The 100 keV electrons and intense VLF waves provide a seed population and energy source for subsequent radiation belt enhancements. Highly relativistic (\u3e2 MeV) electron fluxes increased immediately at L* ~ 4.5 and 4.5 MeV flux increased \u3e90 times at L* = 4 over 5 h. Although plasmasphere expansion brings the enhanced radiation belt multi-MeV fluxes inside the plasmasphere several hours postsubstorm, we localize their prompt reenergization during the event to regions outside the plasmasphere. Key Points Substorm dynamics are important for highly relativistic electron energization Cold plasma preconditioning is significant for rapid relativistic energization Relativistic / highly relativistic electron energization can occur in \u3c 5 hrs

Rocket ozone sounding network data

During the period December 1976 through February 1977, three regular monthly ozone profiles were measured at Wallops Flight Center, two special soundings were taken at Antigua, West Indies, and at the Churchill Research Range, monthly activities were initiated to establish stratospheric ozone climatology. This report presents the data results and flight profiles for the period covered

Can Self-Organizing Maps accurately predict photometric redshifts?

We present an unsupervised machine learning approach that can be employed for estimating photometric redshifts. The proposed method is based on a vector quantization approach called Self--Organizing Mapping (SOM). A variety of photometrically derived input values were utilized from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey's Main Galaxy Sample, Luminous Red Galaxy, and Quasar samples along with the PHAT0 data set from the PHoto-z Accuracy Testing project. Regression results obtained with this new approach were evaluated in terms of root mean square error (RMSE) to estimate the accuracy of the photometric redshift estimates. The results demonstrate competitive RMSE and outlier percentages when compared with several other popular approaches such as Artificial Neural Networks and Gaussian Process Regression. SOM RMSE--results (using $\Delta$z=z$_{phot}$--z$_{spec}$) for the Main Galaxy Sample are 0.023, for the Luminous Red Galaxy sample 0.027, Quasars are 0.418, and PHAT0 synthetic data are 0.022. The results demonstrate that there are non--unique solutions for estimating SOM RMSEs. Further research is needed in order to find more robust estimation techniques using SOMs, but the results herein are a positive indication of their capabilities when compared with other well-known methods.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, submitted to PAS