Last week, IVA held an educative seminar on the subject of equal career paths. With guest speakers such as the (male) CEO of netlight the discussion did not only include the females’ perspectives – such as a large number of other gender equality events only tend to focus include. The audience probably included more than 10-15% males – which I personally thought was a high engagement.
Within any type of technology intensive organisation in todays rapidly developing society one cannot avoid questions of sustainability – including a sustainable working environment where any form of equality should be included. There are a lot of “female networks” within small as large, new or more traditional organisations, but usually male dominated organisations, to give women a larger network, questions of how gender equality can be improved usually arises in such networks. However, I cannot help but wonder how the organisation as whole is supposed to become more educated when the majority of the firm is not actively engaged in the question of gender equality since the network only is for females?
Another guest speaker was Anna Wahl, a professor from KTH researching in gender equality. An interesting learning was that Anna defined the discussion of gender equality into two different parts; the one part of the discussion where people try to argue for the same conditions (mostly physical, e.g. strength, ability to give birth etc) which is very hard to do something about – so the people who disagree in this area of the discussion can agree to disagree. The other part of the discussion is however that all genders should have the same opportunities and be judged from their capability. This is where the discussion should focus as individuals are not judged on their capabilities without being judged by their gender.
At the end of the seminar, a woman from the audience explained that she worked with equality with a lot of start-ups, where many are driven by a few people who sometimes only are men. As every investor looks for sustainability goals, they also look for equality goals – meaning this is something start-ups early focus on. She then asked: When an individual only initiates equality projects because it looks good for the investor, and not because it is a question that is truly cared about – how can I make these people understand that the question needs to be taken with great seriousness?
Somehow, this question is sometimes laughed at when a women brings it up. What I wonder is: Why would a male not need to ask people to take this question seriously?
Thanks for reading this far guys, and please feel free to reach out if you want to discuss this with me. I think it’s an important question that every entrepreneur must care about.
/Sofie
Posting the link to the event which is supposed to be available online:
http://www.iva.se/event/jamstallda-karriarvagar—hur-okar-vi-antalet-kvinnor-i-ledande-positioner-i-naringslivet/
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