After yesterdays post a friend contacted me and told me that it’s even worse with the gender thing inside the Swedish industry.

He had been working on a music company for eight years. Suddenly everyone was taken off their positions. The whole company should be replaced. Since he was only hired as a contractor he had just to accept to quit his job.

When his job came on the market the job description said that they wanted a woman. He knew he couldn’t complete so he even didn’t bother to apply.

A couple of months later the company was still on hiring and through some old office colleagues, he heard they hadn’t found a woman that hold the qualifications for the job. This job is very specific you really need special knowledge to get it done. He then just wrote that he could think to have his old job back to the company.

The company was relieved that he volunteered. And they went into negotiation. They still needed a woman just for the look so they suggested that he could split his job to 50% with a woman that was not really qualified. In reality, they wanted him to teach the new woman so she could do his job.

Money was tight and he really liked this but what could he do, he needed the job so he took it. Already from the start, it was trouble. First, the woman was not informed that her job had been split with someone else and was quite pissed about that. Second, she scheduled a personal vacation the two first very crucial months when they had to start up the work again.

My friend just had to do 100% with just 50% payment. Working for two people and get the whole thing running again. Then when she finally arrived it showed quickly that she was very under qualified for the job. In practical, my friend did 90% of the work. She did only smaller easy tasks.

After half a year there were complaints that they couldn’t get out the salary since to company was low on cash. During the paperwork, he got a hold of a salary list and found out that the woman actually got 100% paid. In practice, she got more paid, did very little and still was underqualified and now he wasn’t even paid because the company was losing so much. And of course, they did they paid 150% in salary for one person to do all the job.

He went to the boss and just asked how this could be. The money situation would be easily solved if they just took the woman off her 100% salary. She was also still in test mode (a Swedish thing) so they could just let her go if they did it directly. She didn’t really contribute with anything that important either and the boss knew it. No, was the answer. They needed a woman on the spot so the company looked equal. Instead, they got several providers to wait for their payment.

Then the woman took some time off to do other projects. Now my friend though since he was already doing 90% he could easily take the rest and raise his salary to 100%. No, he should just get 50% and they were seeking another person to take over the task and it needed to be a woman. Since last time he knew they wouldn’t find anyone suitable. Also, witch part of his job should he hand over to the new woman that only would be there for a couple of months?

It was quite a horror story. This is not equality. This is just a show for the gallery. The sad part is this, not the only story I got knowledge of. The past year I have counted three to four equal bad situation in the Swedish music industry. They mainly just use women to protect themselves, not letting them in.