For more than ten years I have worked with promoting diversity and equality in working life in Sweden. In the 90s much of my work was devoted to training for women and especially women from ethnic minorities. I designed women friendly training programmes focusing on for example ICT, technology and/or entrepreneurship. Furthermore I designed training programmes for women and men where (gender) equality permeated the content and pedagogy. But even if these programmes run by me and many other colleagues were helpful for the individual participant they had no long term effect in terms of changed attitudes in working life. Despite several large scale training initiatives ethnic minority women still face many obstacles in getting a job or setting up their own enterprise in Sweden.

Ethnic minority women's low participation in working life in Sweden were (and still are) often explained by their low educational level compared to Swedish women, cultural background and lack of sufficient knowledge in the Swedish language. Another common explanation was that ethnic minority women were not allowed to work for their husbands. These explanations were false. In fact some of the ethnic minority groups such as women from Russia, Belarus and the Baltic states actually have higher education than Swedish women. Many women are fluent in Swedish as well as several other languages. Most ethnic minority women want to work and many perceive discrimination as one of the main obstacles for getting a job. Not their background or family relations.

So I, as well as my colleagues, came to the conclusion that offering training and/or mentorship for ethnic minorities is far from enough to achieve diversity in Swedish working life. Instead it was necessary to train Swedes and offer them knowledge about diversity as well as possibilities for acquiring intercultural competence. Policy makers and managers were identified as main target groups for training activities. But new obstacles emerged since few managers perceived that they were actually treating ethnic minorities and Swedes differently, when they for example recruited staff. Common explanations for not hiring ethnic minority women were that it was difficult to validate their education. - Her education is not equivalent to the Swedish education in the field. If an ethnic minority woman had a Swedish university education a common explanation for not hiring her was that she did not have the right work experience. The fact that many women have language skills and can contribute with specific intercultural competence is seldom seen as advantages by managers.

So in order to offer training the first step was to facilitate insight amongst managers that they actually where discriminating ethnic minorities. In recent years research focusing on working life and discrimination in Sweden has increased, which has led to a public debate. The debate has to some extent increased the insight amongst policy makers and managers. Several non-governmental organisations have also highlighted the lack of diversity in Swedish working life. Furthermore some of the large corporations are beginning to see diversity in the work force as a prerequisite for competitiveness.

For some years we have in Sweden worked with training focusing on gender equality, diversity and intercultural competence targeting decision makers i.e. the second step. But even though these activities have led to changes in some organisations much of the talk about diversity in working life is still just rhetoric. Diversity policies have been outlined but not implemented at each level in the organisations. One of the conclusions that could be drawn from our Swedish experiences is that insight and training for managers are necessary in order to achieve diversity but without strategies and pedagogy that promotes action i.e. the third step changes towards less discrimination will be slow.

Therefore most of the training activities that I nowadays design are jointly targeting both ethnic minority women and decision makers. The training is based on interactive pedagogy in order to promote action. Problem based learning is used and participants are involved in each step of the design. Visible results are often action plans to be implemented by each individual, the group and/or the organisations involved. The training aims at creating arenas for dialogue between ethnic minorities and Swedes. Dialogues that promotes a deeper understanding for each participant's background, culture and "language".

During the training the concept of culture is discussed both in terms of cultures in different countries, regions, organisations and professions. In order to increase possibilities for an ethnic minority woman to get a job it is not enough for her to understand the more "general" Swedish culture. She must understand the cultural codes in different Swedish organisations and professions. The concept of language is discussed both in terms of verbal, non-verbal and symbolic language. In order for managers to promote diversity they have to understand non-verbal and symbolic language used in different cultures.

Even though more and more pedagogues acknowledge the importance of training Swedes in order to achieve diversity most of the projects in the field are targeting ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities should try to become as Swedish as possible i.e. assimilate to our culture. Sweden faces major challenges in order to move from an assimilation perspective to an integration perspective (diversity perspective) on training. We have not come far in this process and maybe this explains why immigrants in Sweden have so much more difficulties in getting a job than in most other European countries.

Inger Danilda is a consultant in gender equality working for both universities, research institutes, authorities and companies. She has designed policies, strategies, research programmes and training focusing on gender equality and diversity. Inger works in Sweden as well as in other European countries. Currently she is working on behalf of the Swedish Foundation for Small Business Research and the National Institute for Working Life (NIWL) in Sweden. She is involved in a research program at NIWL called "Working lives in urban areas" focusing on social exclusion/inclusion based on gender, class, ethnicity, "race" and sexual orientation.

Inger Danilda, Encounter (inger.danilda@encounter.se)