W2T in Sweden

In Sweden, 37 per cent of employees in the private sector are women but only 19 per cent are managers. Nine out of ten CEOs are men. Of the 248 companies traded on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, only two have women CEOs. Gender distribution is more even in the public sector where 56 per cent of managers are women, but it is still difficult for women to reach the top. In municipalities, despite the fact that the majority of employees are women, 87 per cent of the top officials are men.

W2T is headed by the Equal Opportunities Ombudsman and has participants from fifteen private and public organisations, as follows:

ABB
Cloetta Fazer
Folksam
Swedbank-Föreningssparbanken
The City of Göteborg
Hägglunds Drives
IBM
The Police Authority in Västra Götaland Region
NCC
SEB
The Swedish Broadcasting Corportation
The Swedish Customs
Volvo Cars
Region Västra Götaland; Sahlgrenska University Hospital
Öhrlings PriceWaterhouseCoopers

These organisations are committed to devising action plans to bring more women to the top, and to continuing their activities in this field once the project ends. Each of them has nominated two top management candidates and two mentors, as well as project managers who will run and coordinate W2T work within the organisation.

All of the project managers are participants in a network, so that they can learn from one another and improve their skills and perseverance. They meet to discuss tools for investigation and analysis, plans of action and other ways of bringing more women to the top, such as management development, career development and company programmes to combine work and family life.

The 28 top management candidates form a network supported by professional management developers. The main aim is to enable the participants to support one another in the future. Creating the network is a learning process wherein theory is interwoven with exchanges of experience and practical training. The participants analyse their own ambitions and work situations and devise individual career plans.

Both networks meet about ten times, and the idea is for them to continue meeting after W2T has ended.

Each top management candidate has a mentor from one of the other organisations. The mentors help the candidates to achieve their objectives, display their skills and widen their professional network.

Top management in the participating organisations takes part in seminars and conferences, and keeps up with the project through meetings with the project managers and candidates.

Recruitment consultants
W2T also works together with representatives of the recruitment industry to integrate gender diversity into their work. These consultants participate in the conferences and jointly analyse their own procedures and the opportunities available to them for advocating women as senior management candidates more actively. The results are presented at seminars and on the website. The consultancy firms participating in W2T are:

InterSearch
Heidrick & Struggles
Manpower
Mercuri Urval
TRANSEARCH.

Seminars and conferences
W2T is arranging three conferences in Sweden. The first, on gender and leadership, was held in May 2004, with 120 participants. The subsequent evaluation showed that many felt they had obtained greater insight into the significance of gender in management. The majority felt more motivated to change the situation in their own organisation.

The second seminar, at which tools, methods and examples from the organisations involved in W2T were presented, was held in November 2004.

The project will conclude with a transnational conference in Stockholm on 24-25 January 2005 at which delegates from the different countries will meet and summarise their experiences from Women to the Top.

Publicity
An important means of increasing the number of women at the top is to attract media coverage. W2T has a publicity plan for the project management and the organisations involved.

Follow-up – essential to long-term success
W2T has cooperated with Nyckeltalsinstitutet (the Key Ratio Institute) to develop ‘Jämix’- an index for measuring the state of equal opportunities in an organisation. The index is intended for use in following up equality plans, in annual reports and in benchmarking.

The Equal Opportunities Ombudsman will follow up the project after two years and at that time expects the organisations involved in W2T to have increased the number of women in top management.

Women to the Top is coordinated and led by Marie Trollvik, project manager, and Kerstin Kristensen, project assistant. The project’s e-mail address is info@women2top.net