Themes addressed

The concept of diversity can be analysed with regard to a number of aspects, The most common are:

• Social
  
• Ethnic
  
• Organisational
  
• Gender

The main issue that was discussed in the session was the diversity of gender. It was analysed with regard to different context:

• in society
  
• in culture
  
• in innovation and in EU programmes

Our societies are changing and most sectors are becoming increasingly diversified, but diversity is often more treated as a problem instead of as an opportunity.

Not the least in Innovation, diversity can be seen as a great chance and a stimulus for creativity.

Objectives of the session

The session focused on the opportunities in diversity and on how to better to take advantage of and exploit diversity.

Some examples and aspects discussed

• In Sweden, it is nowadays common to talk about diversity regarding religion, ageing, etc.
  The gender diversity discussion is mainly concentrating upon how to bring more women into traditional male activities and men into female activities. Not only as a question of equality but also in order to gain more creativity and work places full of ideas.

• In Spain, there is one example (Pamplona) of the successful involvement of women in the decision making process. When the municipality of Pamplona was re-organising the public transport, they created working teams with women formulating their needs and demands This starting from the assumption that women constitute the majority of the users.

• In Sweden, an increase of inventions has been registered when increasing the number of women at workplaces.

• In the car industry some decades go, all the executives were middle-aged men in dark suits, but so were the customers as well.
  Today the management in the car industry is still mainly the same middle-aged men in dark suits, but the customers are different and the demand is diversified. (women, immigrants, young people, elderly etc.
  Volvo has seen this problem and has now as a major targets to increase the number of women in key positions, particularly in fields as design.

• Holland is generally a prosperous country, but the work life integration of women is not high and is mainly part-time based.

• In Spain they have started a programme called OPTIMA to integrate more women in the enterprises.

• In Israel, there is the so called "corrective discrimination" in sectors where there is less than 20-30% of women.

• In the IT sector women are less involved. The strategy to change this organise more education and training in order to motivate and inform them.
  

• The culture factors and habits tend to influence women to rather work with women. It is difficult to attract women into technical work.
  

• Women are interested in construction, but, for instance, not in toy construction, because the toys so far are very men oriented.
  

• New pending legislation the USA: men and women separate classes, because of the different way of learning.

• There is still a lot of cultural discrimination also in Europe. Cultural changes take a lot of time.

• In many countries there is still a general need to integrate more women into the labour market.
  

• There is often a lacking trust in the ability of women; there is still a reaction with “surprise” when a woman is playing a managing role within a company. There are still male jokes e.g. about women drivers.

Some conclusions and issues

• Innovations often comes from the mix of the two genders. Women bring new social aspects into innovation

• Gender diversity can be a successful strategy

• There is a need to define indicators for the effect of gender diversity. What is a gender diversified group?

• There is a need for creating specific working groups, defining the objectives in gender diversity.

• How do we motivate women to enter male and men into female domains?
  

• We have to find ways to create equal opportunities for men and women to chose their activities. It is though still necessary to clearly define what a real equal opportunity is.