TechSverige gathered the business community at the Nordic region's largest digital sustainability conference 

Sustainability

On September 11, the annual digologa conference "A Sustainable Tomorrow" with the theme "Dissonance". TechSweden, in collaboration with Swecohosted a hub in Stockholm and gathered around fifty participants from the the tech industry, the rest of the business community and the public sector to discuss the gap between what we know needs to be done and what we actually do to achieve the SDGs. The conference attracted a total of 30,000 participants via 200 different hubs around Sweden, Norway and Finland.

The conference was streamed from Clarion Hotel & Congress Sea U with Catarina Rolfsdotter-Jansson as host. Speakers included Kata Nylén, who discussed dissonance as a force for change, Andreas Magnusson highlighted the role of young people in the climate transition, and Gurgîn Bakircioglu shared his experience of a minimalist lifestyle. Climate psychologist John Jamir Benzon Aruta spoke about climate justice, while Maria Wolrath Söderberg addressed how we deal with climate-related dissonance as humans. As every year, Fredrik Reinfeldt gave an appreciated global analysis, and this year's A Sustainable Prize was awarded to Nicolas Lunabba for his work on social sustainability in vulnerable areas.

- A Sustainable Tomorrow once again succeeds in creating a program that speaks to different audiences but is equally interesting to all. It is a fantastic annual opportunity to raise your gaze and get an overview of the world, while at the same time you get the opportunity to meet like-minded people and ventilate challenges and opportunities in our common transition, says Frida Faxborn, industry policy expert at TechSverige. 

Kristofer Sjöholm, Sustainability Manager Digital Services at Sweco participated on site:  

- Rhetorician and researcher Maria Wolrath Söderberg at Södertörn University gave a fantastically inspiring speech about the need for an individual stand. The importance of everyone using their own position and power both privately and in our professional role and doing what we can to change. The transition does not only take place in the individual or in the system, the transition takes place in the glue that holds the whole society together, and if everyone does something, we can succeed together, was the message, says Kristofer Sjöholm.  

Among the participants was Camilla Cederquist, Manager Atea Sustainability Focus at Atea, who highlighted an important insight; 

- The world needs a new operating system. There was a lot of focus on the individual, but there are many who want to change who are thwarted by the fact that the world is built for other behaviors. We need to create the conditions for the sustainable choices to be the easiest and most natural ones. 

Read more about the conference here: https://asustainabletomorrow.com.se 

Is it good or bad news that you earn more than me?

The proportion of women on the boards of listed companies is now at a record 30.7%, according to the Second AP Fund's annual women's index presented last week. The year before, the figure was 27.9 percent. This is good news and shows "a boost in development", said Eva Halvarsson, CEO of the Second AP Fund. "Bad news," said Annika Elias, chair of Ledarna , who sees no reason to have the patience to "wait 37 years" for Sweden to achieve gender equality.

At the same time, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise presented its report "Women in work and management in business", which they say shows that "the winds of change are blowing" based on the fact that the proportion of women in management is steadily increasing in the business world; now the proportion of women in management positions is almost as high (37%) as the proportion of women in the business world overall (39%). What the report also shows is that the share of women in CEO positions is just above 10% and has been so, with minor variations, since 1998. "No great force in the pace of change", could thus also be a true message. Today, the National Mediation Office presented the report "The gender pay gap 2015 - what do the official pay statistics say?". The headline and main message was that "The gender pay gap continues to narrow". Very true indeed. On the other hand, the fact that the decrease was 0.7 percentage points compared to the previous year, that the total gender pay gap across the economy was 12.5%, the unexplained gender pay gap was 4.6%, and that male graduates are paid more than female graduates in a third of the higher education institutions surveyed, means that the headline "Gender pay gap persists" would be at least as accurate. So what are we really saying? And what are we saying by how we say it? Does it matter? I'm pretty sure it does. For example, it is often said that the difference between a glass being half empty or half full is a matter of attitude. That may be so. But there is no way that someone's attitude determines whether the glass will ever be full, or even remain half full. Looking at things positively sounds good in principle, but does it encourage improvement? Does it make anyone actually do what is required - that is, refill that glass? Or, if you like, the right people to actively do what it takes to make us that equal country that harnesses - and fairly rewards - the skills of its entire population? I'm not so sure about that.  

Minus

"Gender equality is not an HR issue", said CGI's Head of Sweden Pär Fors wisely during the seminar organized by the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise in connection with the release of the above-mentioned report. However, and unfortunately, apparently a women's issue, judging by the fact that the audience consisted of about 95% women.

More

157 out of 3721 events during this year's Almedalen Week are in some way about gender equality - including this one: Womentor's seminar "A gender equal IT and telecom industry - vision or reality?" and of course the 5050 Club's mingle.

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