This International Women's Day #IWD2023, WIL Group - Worldwide Interim Leadership member Michaël Berglund Interim Effect AB shares an insight piece on "Is gender equality stagnating in one of the leading countries in the world?"

Since 2001, 47% of all the leaders we’ve recruited at Michaël Berglund have been women. Something that we are very proud of.

There are several reports and studies whose results show that diversified groups perform better. In the Allbright report from 2022, we can read exactly that. Still, the development in diversity in Sweden has now stagnated at 27% of women on boards. And in the role of CEO and chairperson the percentage of women is decreasing. In a report from The Swedish National Mediation Office, published in the summer of 2022, it was reported that for the first time since 2007, the salary gap between the genders is now increasing. It is therefore essential that we together reverse the current trend.

So why do we at Michaël Berglund think that equality is important? Partly because we believe that diversity is key to an organisation’s success. Something that’s also backed by research. But also due to our valuing equal rights to opportunity. Which is why we actively work to avoid all forms of discrimination. At Michaël Berglund Interim Effect, for example, we’ve chosen to always present the candidates to the client in an anonymised and gender-neutral way. All to minimize the risk of decisions, usually subconsciously, being based on bias.

So how do we ensure equality? Humans are biased, it is something that assists our brains to categorise our surroundings and therefore eases the workload. It is therefore important to be aware of this fact to minimise the effect it can have. That is combined with ways of working and processes to minimise the effect we let it have. If we can take it for granted that it’s known that gender, skin colour or sexual orientation etc, in no way predict or affect how well a person can perform in their work we’ve come a long way. But to do that we need to stop putting up roadblocks hindering that realisation to take form. For example, by actively reflecting on how we recruit our next leader.

Due to the current trend showing a negative development in Sweden, or at least reaching a plateau, we wish to put the spotlight on all the amazing women of the world. Even though we’ve gotten started we want to emphasise that there is still a lot of work left – and we have to continue the effort to reach all the way.