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The goal of this thesis is to study gender equality within the Finnish technology industry. Recently the imbalance between the sexes in the workplace has become a part of the general discourse. This has led to both organizations and governmental institutions taking actions to promote gender equality in the workplace. Previous research has shown that socialization into traditional gender roles affects future career choices and steers individuals into occupations where the majority of employees have the same gender identity as themselves. Furthermore, studies have shown that stereotypical perceptions about the technology industry as masculine are hindering women from seeking a career in technology. This study aims to analyze how technology companies approach gender equality within their organization and the industry in general. The research questions of this thesis are: How do technology companies relate to gender equality? Have companies taken action to promote a more gender equal staff structure? And, how do these companies write about their female employees online? Organizational studies with a social constructivist feminist approach have shown that the ideal employee is still today identified through masculine norms. Thus, women have had to create strategies for how they are doing gender in their daily work, by taking on some traditionally feminine or masculine processes and leaving others out. This thesis is based on a qualitative research approach. The research material consisted of Finnish technology companies' blog texts published on their own websites. The material consisted of 18 blog posts written by 14 companies. The material was analyzed through theme analysis. Social constructivist feminist organization theory laid the theoretical framework for this thesis. The results of this research show an active discussion on gender equality in the Finnish technology industry. The approach to the issue of having too few women in the technology industry differed greatly between the different companies. Only a few companies expressed in their blog texts an understanding that inequality originates from social constructs in society. Most companies place the responsibility of gender equality on women as individuals. There were clearly a desire to include more women in technology, but the benefits of diversity in itself were only identified by few of the researched companies. Most companies unconsciously reproduced the prevailing normative masculine power structures of the industry in their attempts to promote gender equality. The results of the research indicated a willingness in the Finnish technology industry to promote gender equality, but a lack of understanding the structural nature of the problem and the tools required to handle this challenge.

Despite many attempts to promote gender equality, the working life is still gendered. Although much research has been done on gender equality, the impact of outsourced recruitment on gender equality needs to be further explored in the Finnish context. Previous research on the impact of recruiters on gender equality shows that recruiters' work and assessment of job applicants is influenced by many unconscious assumptions. Recruitment can be seen as a process that maintains inequality with the recruiter acting as a gatekeeper to the working life. The concept of the ideal worker has also been widely studied as a phenomenon where the ideal worker is something that no job seeker can achieve. This thesis examines equality as part of recruiters’ work and the recruiter as the producer of the concept of ideal worker. The research data was collected from interviews with professionals of recruitment conducted during the summer and autumn of 2023. A total of three recruiters from three different outsourced recruitment companies participated in the interviews. The interviews were conducted as semi-structured qualitative interviews. Critical discourse analysis was used to analyze the interview data. The critical discursive approach allows for the examination of potential structures of power emerging from the data. Three different discourses emerged from the interviews with recruiters: the discourse of responsibility, the discourse of gender neutrality and the discourse of the ideal worker. Recruiters' discourses conveyed a mixed picture of who is responsible for promoting gender equality in recruitment. In the interviews, the importance of gender in the recruitment process was downplayed. However, the ideal worker was created through strong contrasts between different genders and job positions. In the light of this thesis, the recruiter is seen as a gatekeeper of gender equality as is also stated in previous research. This thesis creates an image of recruiters as strong actors in gender equality who have the power to influence people's work situation but at the same time do not acknowledge the importance of gender in the recruitment process. Further research is needed on the competence of recruiters' regarding equality and on the impact of outsourced recruitment on gender equality in recruitment