The need to remove obstacles as well as the facilitation and support of women’s business activities were the central axis of the speeches, at a recent event of Professional Chamber of Athens and her Committee on Women’s Entrepreneurship of the chamber, with the theme: “Women’s Entrepreneurship: The ingredients of success”.

According to today’s announcement by the chamber, the Minister of Social Cohesion and Family Sophia Zacharakis, in her speech, highlighted the government’s maternity protection initiatives, focusing on the government’s recent intervention to provide special maternity protection for self-employed, self-employed and farm women. He also claimed that the commitment to “every child in a nursery school has already been implemented”, with over 365 million a year being given for this purpose.

“The Ministry of Social Cohesion and Family, will continue to try in this part by adding within the next two years, thousands of new places in nurseries so that when a voucher is given it can be activated”, added the minister.

The president of PASOK-KINAL, Nikos Androulakis, emphasized that the state must be a helper in women’s choices. “We cannot talk about a modern welfare state when we do not give priority to measures that ensure the active participation of everyone in economic and social life,” he noted.

He also reiterated that PASOK’s legislative proposal provides for subsidizing a position through DYPA programs and subsidizing the insurance contributions of the self-employed for one year, while underlining that it is a commitment of his party that no child be left out of nursery and daycare.

The president of Pleusis Eleftherias, Zoe Konstantopoulou, underlined that she is the only female political leader in Parliament, with her party’s parliamentary group also, she said, the only one with an equal number of female and male MPs. During her speech, she criticized government policy, asking for targeted measures to strengthen women’s entrepreneurship and, in general, to support small and medium-sized businesses.

SYRIZA-PS MP Katerina Notopoulou focused in her speech on the necessary social services and infrastructure, which will support women, mainly, in their role as mothers. He also referred to the common problems faced by women and men in business, including high costs, difficult competition, bureaucracy, lack of liquidity, increasing private debt, for which, as he said, the state must find solutions.

For his part, the mayor of Athens, Haris Doukas, referred to the initiatives being undertaken while noting that in the municipality, 45% of the deputy mayors are women and 80% of the appointed councilors are also women.

“In the Municipality we try to support women in their role as mothers, while we undertake important initiatives to protect and support women against gender-based violence. In fact, a few months ago we also set up a municipal equality committee where, together with all the relevant bodies, we discuss and plan policies that we need to develop in order to support the many important and difficult roles of women”, he pointed out.

Finally, in his greeting, the president of the Athens Chamber of Commerce, Yiannis Chatzitheodosiou, highlighted as a critical issue and axis of action of the chamber the widest possible participation of women in business, while the president of the Women’s Entrepreneurship Committee of the chamber, Nadia Stavrogiannis noted:

“We want the female voice to be heard in the institutions of Europe and for the modern Greek woman to benefit from the benefits provided by the laws and programs of other countries, but which do not yet exist in our country.”