Quota as a working method, not as political control
Anne-Marie Fransson, Director of the Association of IT and Telecommunications Companies, sees many successful initiatives, but notes that boards and entrepreneurial companies are lagging far behind.
The IT industry is often portrayed as extremely male-dominated, whether in terms of the number of women employed by companies or their representation in management and on boards. And unfortunately, there is still a strong male dominance - both in companies and in the educational programs that make up the industry's recruitment base. But it is also clear that those companies that are actively working to change the gender balance are doing very well.
Around 100,000 people work in the 1,100 or so member companies of IT&Telecom, of which around 30% are women. The more technical the job role, the lower the proportion of women, which is of course due to the fact that the proportion of women in technical colleges and systems science courses is still low, at around 20%. The share of female managers and leaders in our member companies is 28%, compared to 35% in the business sector as a whole.
But the experience of our mentoring program for female managers, Womentor, clearly shows that those companies that set concrete and measurable goals for increased gender equality also succeed very well. The program is not only a mentoring program for female managers, but also involves company management, who set goals for their own gender equality work and also participate as mentors in the program. Follow-up after last year's program shows that more and more companies are reaching their goals and that participating companies have a higher proportion of female managers than the industry average. For example, long-time Womento participant HP has 50% women in its Swedish management team. So it is possible, if you want it to be.
And there are many more companies in the industry working on good initiatives: Microsoft's DigiGirlz, TechEq launched by Tieto and Netlight, among others, and Sogeti's Women in Business Network, are just a few examples. In other words, there are many initiatives out there aimed at getting more women into the industry overall and into management positions. That's all well and good. But perhaps the industry's biggest challenge now is to lift the glass ceiling and allow women to reach the very top positions. And here the commitment does not seem to be as strong. The figures speak for themselves: only 12% of CEOs in our member companies are women, compared to around 20% overall in the business world.
The proportion of female entrepreneurs in the IT sector is appallingly low, as it is in the industry's boards. At our speed dating with potential female board members, interest was vanishingly low - the number of interested companies could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Maybe we didn't reach the owners with the information, maybe the timing was wrong, or maybe it's simply that interest in increasing board diversity is low in our industry.
The Minister for Gender Equality, Maria Arnholm, is in any case crystal clear: if the business community itself does not show concrete progress towards a more even gender distribution, the threat of quota legislation may become real. So use quotas as an internal working method - many examples show that it is possible, if you want to, and that it produces positive and visible results. It is up to industry stakeholders to choose - act or react!
Anne-Marie Fransson
Director
IT&Telecom companies within Almega