Empowerwoment project at Yoast

I am a feminist. I totally believe in equality between men and women. Raise my children that way too. And still, at Yoast we have more men than women in our management team. As of last week, with me becoming the CEO, we do have a woman at the very top :-). However, in our management-team, there’s only one other woman beside me. And five men. That’s not even remotely equal.

So what’s the deal? I was on the board for four years, I could have prevented this. And it still happened. I was right there. But why? And how? I am afraid I cannot answer that question (at least not in a blog post of medium length). But I am going to take action. This inequality has to change. That’s why I am starting the empower women project at Yoast. I am really enthousiastic about this, but I could use some advice and tips in setting up a program! So help me out!

Responsibility of the employer

Having little women in key positions is of course the responsibility of the company. We should do better at Yoast. I want to do better as an employer and as a CEO. I have now invited all women working at Yoast to participate in the empower women project. The project is called empowerwoment, and yes I agree, that’s a terrible name. But I could not think of anything better and I wanted to start this project right away.

While I want to work with our female employees, making them stronger and helping them to step up, I am well aware that their effort is only part of the solution. The other part of the solution lies in our management. Having few women in our management-team is something we have let happen. And we need to find out why. We need to address those questions. That way, we can prevent this from happening in the future.

Empower those women

I am putting together a program for 5 or 6 women working at Yoast. The program is aimed at helping them to move forward inside our organization. Half of the program will consist of coaching. I want to talk to these women and I want them to talk to each. I want to know about the things they think are holding them back. About the things they think are causing inequalities. I want them to talk about their day to day challenges. About their beliefs, their ambitions, their dreams.

The second part of the program should be more theoretical. As a group, I want us to read books and watch movies and talks about female leadership. I’m thinking of Lean in by Sherryl Sandberg and Inferior by Angela Saini. But I would love some more input here.

A few years ago, I did a talk about gender prejudices at Yoast. Perhaps this year, someone from my project could do that talk. I would also like to invite a speaker in this field to our Yoast offices.

Do you have input or ideas for me?

I would love to hear your ideas and suggestions! Which books should we read? Which talks should we watch? Maybe you have some other ideas what we can do as a group. Please let me know! Thank you!