FAQ Re-Search.

Re-Search is a browser extension that changes a search engine’s image search results, so that men and women are given equal space when searching for images of different professions. When you perform an image search of a profession, a new window opens automatically that displays pictures from the underrepresented gender.

Semcon develops products for everyone. That is why it is important that all kinds of people consider becoming an engineer. The more perspectives we have in our problem solving, the better the products we develop will be. Today there are too few women in the industry, and too few women working at Semcon. We want to change that! Part of this work is to broaden the image of an engineer, which today is very uniform and focused on men, to make the profession attractive to more people.

It began when we saw how biased the results of an image search for an engineer were, but we soon realised that the same applies to many other professions as well. It was simple to expand the function to make Re-Search relevant to more people. If we can help to create a more inspiring picture of other professions we are happy to do so.

Increased gender equality on the labour market is an important and complex challenge that does not have a simple solution. Re-Search is an attempt to broaden the image of who can be an engineer. With the help of a clever technological solution, we can at least create a more inspiring and gender-neutral image of the engineering profession, and do the same thing for 60 other jobs.

Our products should be able to be used regardless of whether the user is male or female. This is why we need more women at Semcon and in the industry, to get more perspectives for our product development. This will make us better at problem solving and make us able to develop better products for our customers. We will also create a more inspiring place to work. Research* shows that mixed working groups lead to increased efficiency, creativity and profitability.

* Harvard Business Review

The solution is open-source and there is an inbuilt suggestion feature where everyone can help by suggesting other biased image search results. We encourage everyone to contribute to broadening the image of different professions together, making them attractive to more people.

Re-Search contains a list of professions where the image search results are dominated by either men or women. When the user does an image search for a profession which is included on the list, Re-Search does a modified search which aims to find images of the underrepresented sex. The results are shown in a new search window.

Re-Search supports Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox on PC and Chrome, Firefox and Safari on Mac.

English

Each browser has an official page which manages extensions, Re-Search can be downloaded from there. Go to the page which manages your browser’s extensions and search for Re-Search, then follow the installation instructions. For Internet Explorer you download a file (available at Semcon.com/re-search) and install Re-Search manually.

At present Re-Search supports approximately 60 different professions. The complete list of professions can be found here: semcon.com/re-search

Re-Search is open-source. All the different components are available on the Semcon Github page: www.github.com/semcon

There are two ways to contribute a new profession:

• Suggest the new profession using the Re-Search suggestion function
• Add a new profession in GitHub directly: www.github.com/semcon

Re-Search does not save any data from its users. The only thing that takes place outside the users own browser is that the list of terms to use is fetched.

The division between men and women at Semcon overall is today 73% men 27% women. Our goal is that Semcon as a company meets the definition for gender equality by 2022. This means having a distribution of sexes between 40/60 per cent throughout the Group.

This is one of our focus areas, from recruitment and team composition right up to management level. We have been working towards a more equal workplace for a long time, but now we have clear goals for the whole Group and will work in a more structured manner to reach them. Our CEO will measure equality goals in the same way as our financial results.