Commitment at the highest level!

Yesterday I met this year's mentees and mentors in the fifth round of Womentor - a mentoring and leadership development program for women in the IT and telecom industry who have taken their first steps as managers and now want to move forward. IT&Telekomföretagen runs the program to support the industry to make greater use of and develop women's skills as future leaders.

I was working at the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation when Ulrika Messing, then Minister for IT, commissioned PTS to implement the first round of the program. The assignment was part of a special action program initiated by the government to increase gender equality in the industry. At the time, in 2006, the problem of few women in the industry was highly topical. Five years later, things look a little better, but the challenge is still very real and the problem just as topical. According to our statistics, the proportion of female managers in the industry is just under 30%. The target is of course nothing less than 50/50.

I know that Messing often and willingly raised the issue. She believed that since IT and telecom developments affect the entire development of society, we cannot afford to lose the skills that a more even gender distribution in leading positions in the industry means. I have to agree, we agree. And I also know that our current IT Minister Anna-Karin Hatt agrees.

Over the years, many companies have invested both time and money in their mentees and mentors - a total of 143 mentee and mentor pairs have participated in the program, which is incredibly gratifying and should be seen as a good step on the road. It's also great to see that among this year's 33 mentors, 11 are CEOs. Talk about commitment right up to the top! Now we expect that this commitment will also start to show in the statistics.

Because one might ask what it costs companies not to use the skills and experience that women have? Has anyone calculated this?