Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

The forest owner cooperative has observed difficulties with keeping women as forest advisers/ buyers. This is a problem because the organisation wish to have both men’s and women’s qualifications. The organisation’s purpose in their equality and multiplicity plan is to increase the knowledge and awareness of equality and multiplicity, increase the credibility to the members and customers, and to be well prepared for the future need of qualifications.
The purpose of this paper is to identify if there are any conditions that may limit female employees at this particular service. Data for this study has been gathered in 14 qualitative interviews. The interviewed have been men and women, who are or have been at this particular service. Some of them still work in the organisation and some in other companies. Three of the interviews have been with managers at the organisation. Because of great geographic distance, the interviews have been made on telephone and recorded for further analyse.
The results show that a majority of the women were hired before a new introduction programme was in use. That meant that some of the women did not have any introduction at all. Because of that, some of the women had difficulties from the first day. Some of the women were hired in a new area for the organisation, which meant that the assignment became even harder.
There is in general bad knowledge about the equality and especially among the interviewed men. To reach an equal office it is necessary that not only the women but also the men take part of the equality work. There are usually only two or three employees in an office and to advance in the organisation you have to move to the headquarters. In an office with only three employees the women is always in minority (if there is any women at all). Research has shown that in men dominated offices women’s need of contact with other women is increasing. In some interviews an idea of a female network was mentioned. That could be a great opportunity to exchange experiences with each other and build and strengthen contacts to women in the organisation. Another subject that was mentioned in several interviews was that the volume target would be based on the whole office, not for an individual person as it is today. This would improve the cooperation in the office and the different qualifications could be used more efficiently. This would in the end also be a good thing for the members and customers.