70 % of the students in engineering programs in Sweden are male. Work places have a hard time finding women to recruit. In high school, only 16 % of the students in the tech-specialized program are girls. Even though Sweden generally is a country where gender equality has come really far, the representation of women in the engineering industries is really bad.

In addition to that, we have a strong male norm within all technological job titles and research shows that most women don’t consider themselves to be tech-savvy.

Our brief is to make more women interested in becoming engineers. No matter how many initiatives we start to attract more women, the issue will always be that the norm is typically male and thus not interesting for women. The perception and the images of the industry is for and by men. To be successful we need to change that norm. To change the norm, we need to change the actual images of the engineering industry.

Therefore we created “Update the image”, a free to use image bank featuring female engineers in less stereotypical environments. By providing pictures of female engineers and encourage anyone to use it we could piggy-back on everyone else’s communication with our purpose. Instead of just creating our own communication, we suddenly changed the ways schools, newspapers and the Swedish Public Employment Service were communicating about the profession.

Together with norm creative photographer Emilia Bergmark-Jimenez we produced 150 pictures to build up the image bank. In order to build up the interest we had a PR strategy launching around international women’s day. The image bank was promoted on the Women in Tech conference in Stockholm and at the Most powerful woman in business – award.

On the international women’s day we had print ads featuring the image bank running in Sweden’s largest newspapers for business and technology.

Major companies within the industry, many of them among Sweden’s biggest employers, have responded by applauding the initiative and started to implement the new photos in their own communication.

Plenty of Sweden’s bigger media outlets have written about the initiative. Examples of publications are the technology magazine “Ny Teknik”, “Ingenjörskarriär” with the target group engineers and the trade magazine “T:” reaching thousands of Sweden’s major technology companies.  

The Swedish Public Employment Service has implemented the new photos – now posting openings with the photos of female role models from the industry as key visuals for male-dominated positions.

The Swedish Minister for enterprise and engineering promoted the initiative on his personal Instagram account. Municipalities, schools and the general public have responded by liking, sharing and wanting to engage in the movement to expand the image of technology and pave the way for more women in tech.

We analyzed the image content of our member companies’ websites to get an idea of how they depict themselves and their industry. Together with an image analysis and a

keyword analysis based on google search patterns, we got a clear idea of what we needed to do.

The target audience is broad and divided into:

1. The public, everyone was encouraged to use our images free of charge and those participating in updating the image of the industry.

2. Editorial staff at newspapers was encouraged to use our image bank when they cover the engineering industry.

3. The companies we represent were encouraged to review how they present themselves in their own channels.

We made an ad for the public, a press release and direct mailing to the editorial staff and used our existing channels to reach our member companies with the launch of our initiative and image bank.

Teknikföretagen (The Association of Swedish Engineering Industries) is an employers’ organization, and a force for innovation. They are present throughout Sweden and assist 3,900 engineering companies in labor law and industry issues, enabling them to focus on developing world-class goods and services.

Until 2030 Sweden needs to educate 100.000 more engineers to be able to cover the needs of working force. At the same time, only 30 % of the students enrolled in the engineering programs are female. In order to succeed with the 2030 goal, The Association of Swedish Engineering Industries is working hard to create gender equality in the tech industry.

Our brief was to create an activation that would attract more women to the industry.

Long-term goal: Contribute to recruiting more labor to the tech education and the technology industry by attracting and including women.

Campaign goal: Setting a new standard. By documenting and offer photos of women in tech the aim was to expand and update the image of the technology and engineers, creating new role models in the industry.