#11 Bold moves towards gender equality with Maren Gräf

Changing cultures: bold moves towards gender equality
with Škoda’s Board Member for "People & Culture"
Maren Gräf 


You hear a lot of people saying “walk the talk” but hardly anyone
takes it as seriously as Maren. For some months last year, she
engineered a shift at Skoda by focusing on hiring
women. “After 126 years of automotive tradition and a
workforce that was 80% men and 20% women, we decided from now on
to focus on hiring women, of course based on equal
qualifications… to correspond to the distribution in the
population, which is 50-50,” she says. 


Gräf knows that it will take time to achieve true balance - and
she has also faced criticism: “I got a lot of questions -
why we now discriminate against men - whether women are at all
interested in technical jobs or do they really want to go into
management - all of this came up. I think the important thing is
to explain again and again that this is all part of a healthy
transformation in the industry.”


This is why we @MyCollective have also started talking to people
within companies who are left behind when their talents go on
parental leave. Once they see the value of having people in their
team returning after parental leave with new skills - the
transformation in the industry that Maren talks about in this
podcast - we will be a big step ahead. It’s all about
#ChangingTheNarrative! 


Speaker: Maren Gräf, Member of the Board, People &
Culture Škoda.


Interviewer: Dr. Ricarda Engelmeier -
Founder @MyCollective


Music: sponsored by @Michaelkadelbach


Picture: Maren Gräf


Graphic & Production: MyCollective


#getinspired #podcast #inspiration #MyCollective #culturalchange
#genderimbalance #genderbalance #equitableworkplace
#womenchangemakers #inspiringwomen #womenleaders #womenontheboard
#femaleempowerment #diversity
#parentalleave #getinspiredpodcast #parenthood