This International Women’s Day I invite women everywhere to do…nothing

Once I had shared my goals with Caroline, my coach, I waited for her response. I expected her to say something about prioritizing, and work life balance, and so on. But the words she spoke were far more insightful. She said, “But Emma, how about you do absolutely none of this?”

Her suggestion made me feel a simultaneous sense of panic and relief. There was relief that I might not have to do all this exhausting, relentless self-improvement work; but also panic that I would be going against the advice I had heard for many years, which went something like this:

• Women aren’t good at networking, so you better get out there.
• Women don’t negotiate their pay, so you must step up.
• Women in senior positions have imposter syndrome, so you better build your confidence.

And so on. You get the point.

This got me thinking about how we approach gender equity in the corporate world, and some of the unintended consequences of our well-intended actions.

Never good enough

I realized that in our efforts to equip women (and other underrepresented groups) with the tools to succeed, we risk reinforcing the message that they are somehow inadequate. By focusing too much of our attention on upskilling women and underrepresented groups, we risk creating a narrative of ‘if only you could network better, be a tougher negotiator, or have more confidence then you’d succeed’, rather than ‘if only we could strengthen our ability to value difference, you’d succeed.’

After all, women aren’t better or worse at networking than men. However, in general, they have fewer and different opportunities to build networks, and as a result tend to build networks focused on stronger, long-term relationships with others rather than those relationships that bring immediate value. On reflection, this sounds pretty good. And imagine the power of combining these different types of networks in a leadership team.

Recent research has also found that women negotiate just as often as men but get less favorable outcomes. So again, the answer isn’t necessarily about getting women to be better negotiators, rather it’s about rethinking how we establish pay and compensation. This is the reason that Reddit’s CEO is currently experimenting with banning salary negotiations altogether.

And it turns out that men and women are equally likely to have imposter syndrome, so perhaps a bit of self-doubt is just part of taking responsibility for something meaningful rather than a uniquely female flaw.

My conclusion here isn’t that as women we shouldn’t bother with building important skills or continuous learning. In fact, we have some excellent programs at Ericsson focused on exactly this. Rather that this should be a choice we make from a position of strength and abundance, rather than deficiency. The programs we create at Ericsson correct for barriers in society, not deficiencies in people.

This is why, at Ericsson, we’re focusing on understanding where we need to make changes to our systems and culture, to better appreciate the different skills and perspectives held by our colleagues. This includes our company-wide cultural transformation program and five focus areas: empathy and humanness—so we can better appreciate each other’s needs and experiences; speak up—ensuring we create space for people to share their different perspectives; fact-based and courageous decision making—so that we’re looking at real rather than assumed causes of gender inequity; cooperation and collaboration—to build high performing diverse teams; and executing speedily—to accelerate the pace of change.

Awareness not discouragement

Another issue is that in raising awareness of the challenges women face in the corporate world and technology sector, we mustn’t leave women wondering ‘why would I work here?’

Amazing work has been done by so many academics and researchers into the less favorable treatment women receive in the corporate sphere. This is incredibly important, and we need to continue to test our organizations, be transparent about the weaknesses in our systems and cultures and resolve them.

But we also need to acknowledge the fact that women have made and are continuing to make incredible contributions to science, technology, and innovation, so that we don’t create the impression that the odds are so greatly stacked against us, it’s not even worth trying.

For me, International Women’s Day is all about writing women back into the story to demonstrate the exciting and impactful careers we have had in the technology industry. From Hilda Ericsson who was a core part of creating the company I work in today, to modern day pioneers like Dame Stephanie Shirley who in the 1960s, created her own engineering company employing a very particular group of untapped talent—mothers —and went on to sell the business for USD 3 billion many years later. And let’s not forget the many more incredible women that often don’t get mentioned, like my mother in the 1970s, who as a woman made up the majority of the workforce at the very practical end of the telecoms industry, running telephone exchanges back when connection was a manual task.

I hope you take a moment to watch the above video that showcases just some of the amazing women that make up our team here at Ericsson. I really want women considering a career in technology to know that people like us have great careers at places like this.

To a brighter, more authentic future

I will be honoring International Women’s Day this year by reflecting on the advice Caroline gave me: that I’m not here to play catch up from a point of deficiency, but to build on strong foundations. I know there are still many challenges for women in the workplace, but I have so many more role models in business than my mother’s generation had, and the next generation are going to have even more. That progress will be made possible by recognizing women and writing us back into the history books as well as by changing organizational processes and cultures to better honor difference.

Research: Women Ask for Raises as Often as Men, but Are Less Likely to Get Them

Reddit CEO Bans Salary Negotiations

Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome