"Gender equality needs a more central role"

International Women's Day was established in 1910 to highlight inequality and the situation of women worldwide. Since then, many milestones have been passed and several glass ceilings have been broken, but we still have a long way to go.

The Allbright report shows that over the past decade, the proportion of women in the management teams of listed companies has increased at twice the rate of the previous decade, and today four times more companies are gender equal. At the same time, in October 2020, Allbright reported gloomy figures - the pandemic has caused gender equality in business to stall, and even go backwards in some areas. The number of companies with no women at the top is growing, the number of gender-equal companies is stagnant, and no industry has a gender balance.

We asked Linda Bohlin Trajkovski, Head of Projects, Networks and Test & Demo, how she sees the way forward to increase gender equality and diversity in business.

- I think the issue needs to be given a more central role and we need to work much more systematically. In the same way that it is obvious today for many companies to work actively with economic and ecological sustainability issues, we need to work with social sustainability issues such as diversity, inclusion, representation and gender equality.

Linda also stresses that gender inequality in business is not only a loss for women - it also threatens innovation and competitiveness.

- As I see it, there is an incredible amount to gain from working actively with diversity and gender equality issues. It has been proven that diversity breeds innovation and creates the conditions for products and services that appeal to more target groups, which ultimately leads to increased competitiveness and profitability. If we look at industry, one of the biggest challenges by far is the supply of skills, where many companies must change to become attractive as employers for a much broader recruitment base if they are to keep up with developments. In this transition, we at Innovatum Science Park hope to be of use to our customers.