Kick-off for Womentor 2021!

- We are convinced that a more gender-equal workplace makes us a better company and a more attractive employer. We also need to build female role models internally. These two parameters made us choose to focus even more on increasing the proportion of women in tech, where we have a poorer gender balance, than in other parts of the organization. We know that role models lead the way forward and the more we can draw attention to them, the greater the likelihood that we will have positive knock-on effects. The ultimate goal is to simply give everyone the same conditions, to promote success," says Pernilla Nissler, CEO of Blocket.

You increased the share of women in Tech to 24%. How have you worked to achieve this goal?

- We quickly identified that for us to have a chance of meeting our target, at least one in three employees would have to be a woman. This would likely make the recruitment process take longer as we did not have that distribution among applicants before. But we were okay with the recruitment taking longer because gender equality is a priority. We have worked on both the breadth and depth to achieve the goal, it has been about everything from how we communicate in the recruitment ads (regarding skills, word choice, jargon, etc.). But also in terms of "attraction" in social media - to simply showcase more women in tech. We also require suppliers to present 25% women and always send at least one CV from a female developer. We have also developed a diversity and inclusion agenda for all employees. We have reviewed our marketing around female representation. We have also reviewed the representation when it comes to presentations at our major meetings and conferences and, not least, we have included this as a target in our company-wide performance management document.

How has the Womentor program helped you reach your goal?

- By providing inspiration for our daily work. It has also helped us in knowledge transfer from both mentors and mentees, helping them and the whole company to put these issues on the agenda on a regular basis and energize the work. We are proud to have surpassed our goal, but we are far from finished in our work. We now look forward to kick-starting the work for this year.

Womentor is a strategic initiative of IT&Telecom companies within Almega. Since its inception in 2006, Womentor has been practically run by Karin Ahlström at the team and leadership development company Ardida. Karin Ahlström is a civil engineer with extensive experience in business development and leadership, and a highly appreciated lecturer and inspirer.

- It takes persistent and systematic work to really make fundamental changes and that is precisely what characterizes Womentor and participating companies, says Karin Ahlström and continues:

- It is particularly encouraging to see that this continues even in times like these, when COVID-19 is affecting so much of the rest of society.