Women Leadership within the ICT-sector

During the past six months Øresund IT together with Mobile Heights has run a project with the aim to strenghten the collaboration between ICT-clusters in the Baltic Sea Region. As a part of the project we have done research about female leadership within the ICT-sector and the results are being presented in a newly produced paper.

The ICT-sector is one of the strongest sectors of the economies in the Baltic Sea Region and is still doing very well despite the credit crunch, but we can become even stronger. We are suffering from having very few women employed, and this is even clearer if you look at the leading positions in the companies. We, as an industry, are serving the whole population with products and services, yet we only recruit from half the potential labour supply in our societies.

“The lack of women leaders is one of the most restrictive factors on the future growth of our industry” says Henrik Thorsell, CEO, Informator.

We have engaged Professor Merle Jacob, Lund University, to research the present state of women leadership within the ICT- sector in the Baltic Sea Region. She has done this both through a review existing research and through in depth interviews with industry representatives.

The results where presented by Merle Jacob during a seminar on the 19th of May and the final report will be finished before summer. This will give concrete advice to ICT-companies in what to do to encourage female leaders. During the seminar we also heard Karin Nygård- Skalman, Vinnova, talk about her previous experiences as a manager at Ericsson and Tina Kaikkonen, The Astonishing Tribe (TAT), who presented why they choose women as projects managers in development projects. Our report will be given on to the Swedish Minister of Enterprise, Maud Olofsson, and her equivalents in the Baltic Sea Region.

Read more here