Credit: Steven Miller, Chronicle.lu
On the evening of Thursday 6 March 2025, Silicon Luxembourg hosted the event “Breaking The Mould: Women Navigating Male Dominated Industries” at INNSiDE Hotel in Luxembourg-Gasperich.
The event, focusing on women who have made a tangible impact on diversity and inclusion in their companies, consisted of a panel discussion featuring six guest speakers: IT Program and Project Manager at PwC Luxembourg, Julia Khalyavko, DTM President at THE NETWORK, Mariana Florea, Managing Director at ZEDRA GROUP, Peter Brown, HR Director EMEA at Sun Chemical, Hilko Hedden, Country Manager at Select HR, Breanna Schaefer-O’Reilly, and founder and CEO of OQ Technology, Omar Qaise.
The event began with a brief networking session where attendees were invited to meet the speakers before they took to the stage. With moderation undertaken by Silicon’s Judith Schleder, each member took turns to provide an overview of their career paths, detailing some of the challenges and successes they experienced along the way.
After the introductions, the first question put to the panel was: How did they navigate the challenges they have experienced in male-dominated fields? The common response was that, in each of the industries represented by members of the panel, there is still a lack of representation and role models to assist women in their career paths. Although there has been improvement over the years, a lack of leadership at all levels has hindered women’s confidence and ability to recognise their own value as well as the opportunities available to them. The panellists also touched on the impact of both conscious and unconscious bias in the recruitment process, leading to agreement that the existence of these biases outside the workplace can have serious ramifications within the workplace and that education at all levels is needed to remove the prejudices.
The next question asked: What strategies can be implemented to foster real change for women in the workplace? Here, the panellists addressed the positive and negative impacts of diversity laws, with panel members agreeing that, fundamentally, merit needs to be the driving force behind recruitment and whilst diversity laws are necessary and have improved equality, using them a “tick-box exercise” neither benefits employees nor employers. Examples were given on how instances of discrimination were tackled and how it often takes instances of prejudice of bullying being raised to implement improved protocols within the workplace. All were in agreement that the most important strategy was to create the right environment, allowing people to make better decisions and set the correct tone about what is and is not acceptable within the workplace environment. The panel members also emphasised that it is important to create a culture with guidelines for employees at all levels. The panel noted that for the benefit of all, be they employee, employer or customer, quality leadership at all levels is crucial in fostering positive change and allowing a business to flourish.
The final question of this part of the event was: How can we all contribute to a more inclusive and equitable workplace? Here, the panel touched on the need to improve education from a young age by providing better role models and helping to eradicate societal prejudices early on. Improvements are also required in the psychological aspects of recruitment from both an employer and employee perspective, with a need for better availability of information relating to the options available to women regarding their potential career paths and developing an understanding that, if a job turns out to not be what an employee expected, there is no shame or harm in recognising this and that moving on to an environment which better suits their values and expectations is ultimately beneficial to both the employee and the employer.
After the panel discussion, there followed a Q&A session with the audience which touched on their workplace experiences. This gave the opportunity for panel members to discuss similar examples from their own work places and provided advice on how to navigate problems such as lack of promotion, under representation and the often difficult discussion of pay equality.
Upon conclusion, attendees were invited to a networking session where food and refreshments were served.
SM
