Now you can see it
Semcon
Issue 42 | March 2017
Agency
Forsman & Bodenfors
Creative Team
Art Director Karin Jacobsson Copywriter Gustav Johansson Digital Strategist Stefan Thomson Designer Magnus Almberg
Production Team
Agency Producer Jim Elfving Production Company Folke Film Director Laerke Herthoni Producer Daniel Andersson Music Jonas Quant Editor Peter Brandt Colorist Sophie Borup Online Can Film
Other Credits
Account Supervisor Susanna Glenndahl Thorslund Account Manager Jessica Bonebjär Helen Johansson Planner/Researcher Klara Knape PR-Strategist Bjarne Darwall PR Agency Matter Media Partner Aol/BeOn
Date
November 2016
Background
Semcon's aim was to make the engineering profession attractive to a wider range of people. Many women worked as engineers, but they did not appear in search results. Re-Search was developed in order to provide a concrete solution to the problem, by giving a more balanced view of various professions. These included those that are dominated by both men and women on the internet.
Idea
The problem was that when young people were looking for ideas about a career, if they searched online for 'engineers', inevitably they were served an image of men in yellow helmets. How could young women feel that the job might be relevant to them?
Equally, search for pre-school teacher and you would be served a picture of a young woman.
Role models were important when people are thinking about their career choices.
Re-Search was a browser extension, which gave men and women more equal space in the search results. When you performed an image search of professions with Re- Search, an alternative search was made in parallel to make the results more gender balanced. The alternative search results were presented in a new window, where pictures that would otherwise end up further down are brought forward.
To stimulate further ideas, Semcom has made the technology open-source and free. At the moment, 65 professions can be searched more equally but perhaps there are other ways to stimulate greater gender balance.
Results
Semcon has set its own target as being a gender balanced company by 2022. This means having a male– female ratio between 40 and 60 percent throughout the group.
Our Thoughts
Fixing gender disparity is a simple matter of economics. Many brilliant candidates for different jobs have been lost simply because those people have felt they were the wrong sex. As Semcon put it on their website, if you can’t see it you can’t be it.
This is a tremendous initiative and I can think of several major companies who would benefit hugely from adapting and using it.
The problem is getting people to be aware of Re-Search. If you’re a creative and you can see a role for this extension, use it, please!