Add Gender + Mentimeter = EQmeter
Det finns inget bättre än förebilder! Förebilder som kan visa på allt det som är möjligt, som ger oss modet att våga drömma om det som tidigare kändes avlägset, eller kanske rentav omöjligt. Kvinnor som förebilder får tyvärr sällan det utrymme som motsvarar insatsen. Därför är det extra roligt när vår samarbetspartner Mentimeters egen marknads- och tillväxtchef Donna Hanafi inte bara listas av Veckans Affärer som en av 2015 års supertalanger utan även dyker upp i måndagens Dagens Nyheter. Mentimeter startades av fyra killar på Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan. Produkten programmerades fram på kvällar och helger för att idag vara ett företag med ett tiotal anställda och med modet att våga utmana och tänka nytt, både i det tekniska och gällande jämställdhet. Bland annat valde de att inte vara med på SthlmTechFest då de ansåg att evenemanget inte stämmer överens med deras värderingar (du kan läsa om det här). De jobbar aktivt för en jämställd representation i sin rekrytering. Vilka grundarna är är det svårt att ändra på men framtiden är ett oskrivet blad, och de tar ansvar för den.
Samarbetet mellan Add Gender och Mentimeter började på TechEq förra året. TechEq är ett initiativ där “IT- och teknikföretag går ihop för att göra något åt jämställdheten inom branschen”. Vår kollega Alice Marshall var med i en paneldebatt med bland annat dåvarande jämställdhetsminister Maria Arnholm och i publiken satt VD:n för start-up företaget Mentimeter, Johnny Warström. En sak som Alice sa slog rot hos Johnny, nämligen att när jämställdhet mäts, blir det gjort. Detta passade som handen i handsken med det som Mentimeter gör, nämligen att låta företag skapa frågor i en applikation som deltagare kan svara på, och se resultatet i realtid. Jämställdhet mötte teknikvärlden, jämställdhetsentreprenörer mötte teknikentreprenörer, och frukten av detta blev #EQmeter. Alice och jag själv tog fram frågor till Mentimeter och fyllde detta innovativa verktyg med Add Genders samlade kunskap om jämställdhet.
Sedan #EQmeter lanserades i juni 2014 har Add Gender hjälpt Mentimeter att ta fram #EQmeter 2.0, och flera stora företag använder sig nu av #EQmeter, bl.a. Tieto, UBER och FundedByMe. Företag som tror på och följer devisen att “When gender equality gets measured, it gets done.”
Introducing #Eqmeter, Add Gender and Mentimeter’s equality tool
I am delighted to write this blog to kick-off Add Gender and Mentimeter’s partnership and release of #eqmeter. Together, we are ensuring that organizations globally have a free tool that will allow them to kick-start equality discussions, follow-up equality work and easily illustrate long-term equality trends. Mentimeter is a free survey tool that you can use for meetings, conferences, and group discussions. It shows the results of your survey questions in real time, and the audience answers using their phones. It’s especially great for equality, because it’s anonymous. So there is no barrier to having an honest, open discussion.
Add Gender and Mentimeter are releasing the #eqmeter, which is a global, 3-question survey that measures every participant’s answers in real time. Check it out here and immediately see how your answers change the overall tally. We are also giving away a free, 5-question survey about equality to every person who tries Mentimeter‘s free premium trial.
I want to say upfront, though, that this tool isn’t for measuring everything relating to equality. It has limits. You might be wondering, “How do you measure equality?” Well, we have a tool called 3R that allows us to measure three different areas concerning equality in an organization.
First, we look at the number of women and men at all levels and departments. (This can also be applied to other diversity indicators, like age or background). We also look at who’s taking sick leave, parental leave, full time or part time employment, and lots of other things.
The next area we look at is resources. Are people being paid the same wages for equal work? Allowed the same opportunities for professional development? And so on.
The third area that we look at is culture. This is where surveys like Mentimeter are helpful. They help us understand how people feel, why equality is important at their workplace, what’s hindering equality, work/life balance, and much more. The limitations that survey data have is that they cannot provide us with statistics on either of the first 2 areas that I mentioned – they can’t give us facts regarding representation or resources. For those, we need to use other tools.
But they can provide us with a goldmine of rich data on whether or not people know who to talk to if they experience discrimination or harassment, whether people feel that there are equal opportunities for everyone, and much more.
Mentimeter is also great as means of following up on your equality goals. This could be through doing a short equality survey in your team meetings or conferences every few weeks or months, and tracking the results over time. Feel free to customize this survey and add on questions that are relevant to your organization.
Every country has different rules regarding how you should work with equality. In Sweden, if you have 25 or more employees, you have to write an equality plan and update it every 3 years. If you have one man and one woman employed doing the same work, you have to do wage surveys every 3 years to make sure that you’re not discriminating in your payment of salaries. Add Gender can help you with these things, and there are many free resources on the Discrimination Ombudsman’s website too. To really understand the third area, culture, and follow the law, organizations with 25 or more employees also need more advanced surveys than the one provided here to understand their present situation.
We hope you’ll use this tool to start talking about equality, to start asking questions, and to follow-up with your other equality work. Last week I used Mentimeter to ask a few questions at a lecture for 100 people, and they were delighted with the real-time results. I hope your team is also delighted and interested in their survey results! Let us know what you think! Follow the discussions at #eqmeter and #techeq. I especially want to thank Jessica Areborn, who was instrumental in making this tool happen.
Men Leading Gender Equality
Lately I’ve been noticing that a lot of men are starting awesome initiatives to create more gender equality. I wanted to write this blog to share these initiatives, and I also wanted to talk about the fact that gender equality is not just about women. Gender equality is about equality between women and men, and thus, has to do with both men and women. Gender inequalities in society affect men in profound ways, from childhood to adulthood. They limit the choices that both men and women can make. In order for us to get rid of these unwritten rules and norms and create a society where gender doesn’t matter in terms of your wage, your choice of profession, in who takes care of children and sick parents, and so many other things, we need the help and participation of both women and men.
I want the discussion surrounding gender equality to be inclusive, positive, and proactive. And I want men to feel welcome in this discussion. The aim of this blog is to show the many examples of men who are already leading gender equality. I hope that this list only grows in the future.
To start with, I wanted to highlight our three extremely talented male colleagues on our team at Add Gender. Frederick Lidman is an expert on masculinity, i.e. the norms and expectations placed on men. Emil Åkerö is an expert on norms, and cultural representations of LGBTQ individuals. Tomas Gunnarsson, aka Genusfotografen, works with gender depictions in media, especially in pictures and advertising. We are extremely proud of the awesome team we’ve gathered together at Add Gender. We’re always learning from each other, and that’s why I think we have the best team of gender equality and diversity consultants in Sweden.
In addition to our awesome male colleagues who are working everyday to improve gender equality, the following list includes some of the most exciting initiatives at the moment created by men. Of course there are so many more men who are leading gender equality who aren’t on this list. Feel free to add more names and initiatives in the comments. For those who are new to us, we welcome you to join the discussion, help us expand our network, and chat with us on FB and twitter. Let’s create equality together! Without further ado, here are the initiatives:
The folks behind Tacka Nej: Thomas Frostberg, Marcin de Kaminski and Fredrik Wass (pictures in that order), in collaboration with Rättviseförmedlingen:
What’s #TackaNej?
Tacka Nej is a campaign, started by the three of us together with Rättviseförmedlingen (Equalisters), meaning to make unbalanced public appearances – panels, jurys, events and such – more proportionate. (Alice’s note: Tacka Nej translates as ”decline.” When invited to speak on a panel, the ever-increasing members of this initiative will only attend on the condition that there is at least 1 woman onstage as well. Otherwise, they’ll decline. People show their commitment by putting themselves on the Tackanej list, which you can see by scrolling down on their homepage. This initiative is a follow-up to a similar, also highly successful initiative by Rättviseförmedlingen from two years ago, Tackaja, which focused on getting more women in TV debates, in the media, to be selected as experts on panels, etc.)
Why is equality important to you?
Today, we can see how most panels and events are effectively ignoring a large part of our population. For no reason. This means that we all miss out on a huge amount of knowledge and wisdom. Tacka Nej is an attempt to balance public appearances in order to get the best out of our population all together.
Anurag Choudhary, TiE Nordic, Women Investing in Women Meetup
What’s Women Investing in Women?
Women Investing In Women is a global coalition of passionate individuals to foster broader access to capital for women and to promote the growth of women-led startups and businesses. Stockholm Investing In Women Meetup series is a local initiative in this direction with a focus on showcasing women in startups as founders, leaders and investors.
Why is equality important on the startup scene?
I think gender equality is not only important; it is a MUST for any healthy and vibrant startup scene. Women are excellent leaders, team-builders, they bring higher returns, they are better money-managers, they combine logical and intuitive thinking in seamlessly amazing ways, they are power users of every popular and useful technology, they are super connectors, the companies they build are more capital efficient than the average. So, I strongly feel that working towards creating favorable conditions to nurture more high-growth women-led startups should be a TOP priority for everyone involved within the startup ecosystem in any capacity.
Jonas Karlsson, Swedish Tech People
What’s Swedish Tech People?
Swedish Tech People is a list of women in tech and startups in Sweden. (Alice’s note: Jonas created this list by sending out a blank spreadsheet on Twitter and asking people to fill it out. He’s currently adding more people to the list as people email him their name, title and a picture. As of January 27, 2014, there were 86 people on the list.)
Why is equality important to you / on the startup scene and in IT?
The more perspectives the better. We must realize that much of what we take as given truths in the IT and startup world today, are truths which usually are created by men.
The organization Men for Gender equality (Män för jämställdhet)
You can learn more about Men for Gender equality on their website or facebook page, or learn more about membership here.
Finally! A Woman Will Be Leading US Central Bank
Today I woke up to some pretty awesome news. For the first time in 100 years, the US Federal Reserve, the central bank of the US, will have a female chairwoman, Janet Yellen. This is a huge deal! You can read about it here: (Yellen to Lead Fed, New York Times) Yellen was just confirmed by the Senate yesterday and is expected to take office in February. This position is one of the most powerful in American government, and especially in the field of finance, it’s so wonderful to see a step forward on the gender equality front. In terms of worldwide central bankers, there are very few women. The European Central Bank has some serious gender equality work to do, with not a single woman among its 23 member policy board. (Women Scarce in Central Banks, New York Times). Just make it happen people! If the US can do it, so can you. No. More. Excuses.
Here’s what not to say about women as a CEO
Normally on our blog, we try to inspire with stories of success in gender equality and diversity. But this story was just too good to not share. It’s also a really good example of what can happen if you don’t think or reflect about gender equality, inclusion and respect at all as a leader, or consider them an important element of your own professional development. The founder and Chairman of a US women’s yoga apparel company, Lululemon, has recently come under intense scrutiny for his outrageous comments about how ”some women’s bodies just actually don’t work for” his company’s yoga pants. This was his comment addressing concerns that some of the company’s $98 yoga pants are see-through. Remind me to never buy anything from Lululemon! Some tips: don’t insult your customers. Especially don’t insult them about the way they look – BIG mistake. Chip later tried to apologize for the comments in what was called ”the worst apology ever.” Priceless. Thanks, Chip, for this great example of what NOT to say when you’re in a leadership role! Here’s the link to the cringe-fest, enjoy!:
