Doubling Female Technical Students at Herningsholm Vocational School.

The first step was mapping the school’s diversity baseline at the time. Therefore, Boss Ladies did a thorough analysis of the status quo through focus group interviews with female students, observations of classes and bridging courses for primary school students and interviews with both teachers and leaders.

This gave a unique perspective on the school’s potentials and challenges, and made it possible to plan targeted initiatives, with the purpose to improve admission, well-being and retention of female students. Some of our central initiatives consisted of a broader focus on communities for female students in the technical vocational educations and a targeted bridging course, where female rolemodels played a strategic part in the recruitment of new female students. The school’s technical educations’ changing rooms were also improved by setting up screens, making it impossible to look in when opening the door to the changing room. This caused the students to feel more secure and meant that they no longer had to change clothes in their cars.

An important part of the effort has also been developing and implementing the school’s first policy preventing sexism and plan of action. These put the school’s values into words and defined sexism and violations while the plan of action guides to the steps that need to be taken when processing a case. We completed the transformation project with a set of anchoring workshops, that educated key personnel to embed the continued development of diversity.