Swedish journalist Camilla Wagner presents a graph on the representation of women on boards
Pohjola-Norden, a nordic cooperation agency, together with the women’s mentor network Diamanten organized a seminar on diversity in leadership teams yesterday, 28 May 2013, in Helsinki Finland. The speakers at the seminar included the Finnish Minister for Gender Equality, Paavo Arhinmäki, Tomas Qvist, Director of Human Resources at Ericsson, Sweden, Camilla Wagner, Swedish journalist, as well as Anne Grethe Solberg, from Gender Consulting, Norway. Below are some brief notes on points that came up during the seminar:
- In Finland, women’s Euro is worth 18% less than the men’s
- In Finland, young women still have lower chances than young men of advancing into leadership positions
- It has been proven that equality and diversity in organizations and coorporations have a positive effect on the economic situation, on the quality of the decisions and on consumer satisfaction
- In Finland, women still constitute a minority when it comes to executive directors’ positions
- In the business world, there are many ways in which women are ‘pushed’ off the career ladder
- The government must take an active role in supporting gender equality within the business sector
- The following have been proven to be good practices at the work place to support equal opportunituies: To have a gender action plan in place, which is followed-up on; actively combating stereotypes; concentrating efforts on fair recruitment practices
- A better distribution of parental leave between mothers and fathers would also enhance gender equality
- When there is a lack of diversity in a team, innovation dies out and decisions are made quicker, while the quality of the decisons suffer
- There are studies from Sweden that show that male leaders shun away from the question of gender equality because they are afraid of not getting it right and thus loosing face, or even afraid that they will be perceived as illoyal towards their male colleagues
- Support and engagement from highest management is key
Andrea Nyberg's Gender Blog 