Birgitta Rydbeck: Christies Sweden Chief Representative  The headquarters of Christies Sweden is housed on a central Stockholm street across from a lush park and accessed by a tap of the doorbell, conveniently located next to the elegant man-high windows. Birgitta Rydbeck, European Director and Chief Representative of Christies Sweden, opens the door and welcomes us into the strictly elegant foyer which is dressed in marble and glass and gleaming stacks of the auction house’s latest catalogues. She waves us into the conference room next to her office, and we find that there are few additional rooms. This is, as she explains, simply “the representational office with 2 old ladies in it.” She is referring to herself and her colleague. We look her over skeptically. This is no old lady. Birgitta Rydbeck is, quite frankly, hot. She doesn’t look a day older than we imagine she looked 30 odd years ago, when she decided to take a break from studying economics at the University of Lund, ignore all the unsolicited condemnations (“You are insane, how can you do that?!”), and realize the “young girl’s dream” she had always had to work as an airhostess for Scandinavian Airlines. Birgitta Rydbeck may look the part of a groomed Stepford wife with her perfectly coiffed hair and impeccably chosen outfit, but she is, in fact, an iron lady. After a hard-won coup turning her summer airhostess gig into a long and prestigious career as one of the first major female leaders at SAS, first as the director of the SAS Flight Academy and later as the head of Nordic and Intercontinental routes, she landed the job as the Swedish head of Christies, which competes with Sotheby’s as the foremost auction house for art in the world. She is not humble in the meek sense of the word. She acknowledges that she has worked hard and has done well.
She has also overcome a tremendous tragedy. She was on vacation with her family in Thailand in December of 2004 when the Tsunami hit. She returned home with her two sons. Her husband, the well-known lawyer Otto Rydbeck, and her youngest child, daughter Ebba, were lost. We are young and naïve, still with one foot in a childhood that insists on immortality, and so it is difficult— no, impossible— for us to comprehend this kind of loss, or how one can pull oneself up from it. But Birgitta Rydbeck did.
What follows is the account of a thoroughly impressive woman, professionally as well as personally. And one who makes no excuses for the decisions she has made in her life, nor for the meager amount of women who share her place in leadership positions in Sweden. Rydbeck deems the debate over gender equality in the workforce excessive. Women have a choice between working and staying home. A choice, she means, that men do not have. In fact, she even claims women are the privileged sex. Read on to find out why.
Can you tell us how you got to the position that you are in today?
"[After leaving SAS], I was contacted by my predecessor at Christies. She had been the head of Christie’s Sweden for 30 years. She asked me if I was interested and that was of course flattering. I was in London twice for interviews for the position. They made it clear that there are three things that you need to get this job: art, business and contacts. That I had business competence went without saying. And I have a wide contact net in Sweden. Art— that was the question mark. But fortunately, I had parents who were interested in art so I grew up surrounded by it and have always maintained a personal interest in it. As an amateur, I’m rather skilled. But I’m not an expert. But the job here is not that of an expert. I’m the business-getter. I have financial targets to fulfill. I’m responsible for doing the financial planning. I have to be able to talk about the objects, yes, but then we have experts to really deal with the art itself."
 How do explain that there are so relatively few female business leaders in Sweden?
"I think you must not forget one reason to why there are fewer women to choose from for the top positions, and this goes for all businesses. The reason is that we, the women, choose to stop at some level. We do not go all the way to the top. It’s a choice we make. It’s not that it’s not open to us. I think that we perhaps feel, ‘why should I give the company all of myself? I have a family.’ Or even if you don’t have a family, you may feel that way. And this feeling, together with the tradition that we have, makes it so that there’s no one who thinks it’s strange for a woman to say, ‘I want to work part-time, or I want to take 18 months of maternity leave.’ Everyone thinks it’s natural if a woman is free like this. We have a choice and we use this choice a lot of the time. I think it’s almost always forgotten in the debate that this is a big reason as to why there are fewer women to appoint to boards or in executive positions. Men aren’t expected to ever take breaks, or work part-time. They are expected to work full-time all their lives.
"I think that this is an advantage that women have, actually. I see more and more women making this kind of choice. But this is never an argument in the debate. I think we are the privileged sex. I really think we are. There are always exceptions. If you are a mother, a single mother, then you are pressed to get money for the day. Then of course it is another question. Those that don’t have education, that are working full hours…of course women in the service sector, low educated, single mothers, there the politicians should work. Of course these women do need support. But I don’t think some kind of support is needed for the most educated women. We shouldn’t do affirmative action for women, saying that 40% of all boards need to be women and all that. That will come...if we want it to. Society can’t make everything so that you can get both things [work and family] 100%. You have to make that a personal choice. I don’t feel that women on these levels are discriminated against.
"I am an example of that. I made my choices. I worked full time, absolutely. But I made a decision that I wouldn’t make a push to get a higher position, to get to the very top. I thought: it’s not worth it."
What was it like, juggling your demanding career with your three children?
"Otto and I always both had full-time jobs, and three children. It was a struggle, yes. For thirteen years we had someone living with us to take care of the home. And, of course, you could say that I am aware that I didn’t see my children as much as I could. When Ebba [her youngest] came I was a bit more relaxed, but during the childhood of the boys, I didn’t know much about their whereabouts. The girl that lived with us, she did everything. When I came home, they were in their pajamas. In a way, I was unaware. That was a bit necessary, because otherwise, if you’re a coddling parent, you can’t have a job. I didn’t do that [be the coddling parent] very consciously at the time…because then it would have been a very difficult decision. Absolutely, I don’t regret my working career at all. I talk about it with the boys from time to time, and we laugh about it.
"Yes, we had help at home. But that isn’t about raising your children, that’s about taking care of all the washing, housework etc. The raising of the children, of course, you have to do yourself. I think we had a good divide in that, my husband and I. We cooperated in a very good way. We had the same view on parenting in the larger sense, in how they should be raised. So, there was no need to argue about it. I think we had a fair divide."  What are your feelings on intensive parenting, which is increasingly the norm these days?
"I think it’s a bit wrong. Of course, it’s very important that children feel that they have support in their home. Everybody needs that. But calling your grown-up children several times a day when they are at work, no. I have some friends who call their children all the time and their children are grown ups and they have jobs. One is 30 years old and her mom calls her all the time and asks, ‘have you done that or this?’ And I think that’s too much. And also, driving children to all these activities…there are buses, you can walk, you can bike. I think you shouldn’t drive your children everywhere. It’s too much."
You experienced a very great personal tragedy. How did it affect your views on working and living?
"Now, I can tell you, that when I talk about it, I cannot understand how I went through it. It’s like I’m talking about another person. My work was a support in that time, I would say yes, absolutely. I was in the hospital after coming back from Thailand. I left the hospital on a Thursday, and then on Monday I started working again. But then after that, for half a year it was…well, difficult to be completely present. But I just felt that I want to come here [to the office]. I felt safe. I wanted to go here. What I was conscious about is that it was important to keep– that is really some advice when you are hit by a tragedy- that you try to keep your routines. If I had stayed at home, there would be thoughts all the time. But here I had to do things.
"My work has always been an important part of my life. And I must say, which can sound strange, that my views on life and my personality in general have not changed as far as I know. Which, in a way, I think is strange, because I thought you were supposed to become more humble. I don’t think I am more humble than I was before. People tend to think that your character will be changed. Of course now you take one day at a time. But I don’t want things changed. I want to have projects. I want to have goals. Not everything that is said by the psychologists and so forth is true for everyone."
Do you see that the young generation of professionals are working differently?
"Yes. What strikes me, even if I don’t feel that old, is that there’s a difference in the respect that you feel for hierarchy. Before, you had a kind of respect towards your boss, and his or her boss. And I don’t mean that respecting hierarchy is a good thing in and of itself. You should respect other people, but it shouldn't have to do with positions. But I do feel as though people your age don’t have the kind of respect for authority that we had. The first time that I came to fly on a plane as an airhostess, I curtseyed to the captain!"
What advice would you give to young people hoping to strike a balance in their own lives in the future?
"There are no free lunches. You should be aware that if you want to have a career and you want to raise a family, it is hard work. You feel like you are running, running, running around. No free time. Having a leadership job with financial responsibility and with employees, means that you are not really free when you are off-duty because you always have problems to solve. It wears you down. You should feel yourself what you want to do, do that to the extent that you want…but you should never think that the community should put everything in order, organize it for you. You can’t come at 9 and leave at 5 and have vacations and not think about your work. It’s not like that. The thing is, that it never leaves you, these things that come up when you are in charge of a lot of people. It’s stressful. All these personal problems, salary issues, problems between employees...it never leaves you when you are off-duty. You are always thinking about it. You have to sacrifice and work really hard. You have to accept that. It’s a personal choice. There should for example be the possibility to have good help in your home for reasonable prices…that would make it easier for both people in a family to work. Of course, that should be done. But you cannot demand that all jobs be 9 to 5, so that women can go home and make the dinner for the family."
Rydbeck may not be modest or unassuming with respect to her personal character. Frankly, that’s refreshing for the people she interacts with and, surely, has been profitable professionally. Yet, Rydbeck’s expectations of the government, employers and society, are extremely modest: she does not assume that women belonging to an educated elite require special support to balance work and family life. According to her, these women have made their choices, have been fortunate enough to have choices, and, like her, have been managing just fine.
Whether traditional female roles are freely “chosen” by women is up for debate (see “I Choose My Choice!” and “Homeward Bound” ), Rydbeck points us to a far less examined issue: the stereotypes and discrimination men face when it comes to their roles as workers and parents. The fact that for men, choosing balance the way women can, and do, may not be an accepted choice at all. Now there’s a long ignored problem that deserves some artful debate.
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