International Women's Day - every day!

Today is no ordinary day, today is International Women's Day. It is important, but at the same time, an issue as big and obvious as gender equality and women's rights should not be limited to one day a year. Every day should be a day of equality.

Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Human Rights and Vice-President of the Commission, announced yesterday that the Commission is planning a public consultation to identify possible measures to address the imbalance in Europe's boardrooms at EU level. The aim is to get listed companies to increase the proportion of women on their boards to 30% by 2015 and 40% by 2020. On average, only 12% of board members in major listed EU companies are women.

It remains to be seen what will come out of this consultation, but like the majority of EU countries, I do not want to see a law on quotas. Instead, I believe in putting the responsibility on the companies and the owners. It is the people who own the company who should also decide who should sit on the board and manage the company. And I know that many companies in the industry are working hard to recruit women, but the statistics speak for themselves: the IT industry is one of the industries with the lowest proportion of women in CEO positions.

In other words: It. goes. Too. slow!

But let's not crumble in the face of this fact, but instead get going and see it as an opportunity. Let's continue to be determined and target our activities so that we take full advantage of the entire skills base we actually have available. We are actually talking about new business opportunities and increased competitiveness! No for-profit company in the world can afford to close the door on such opportunities!

As a trade association, we are also trying to do our bit. For the past five years, IT&Telekomföretagen has been running the Womentor leadership development and mentoring program. 53 companies have participated since 2006, with over 150 women in leadership positions as mentees. You can read more about them at womentor.se
I am convinced that all these 150 women will continue to strengthen our industry's management teams and boards in the long term, every day.