Caroline Farberger was CEO of a Swedish insurance company before coming out as trans in 2018. In the stern podcast “Die Boss” she tells how that changed her management style and why she didn’t see her privileges as a man before.
She went home as Carl and came back the next day as Caroline: In September 2018, the Swede Caroline Farberger wrote an e-mail to her employees and informed them that from now on she would live as a woman. The then CEO of a Swedish insurance company had planned the move for a year in detail. “After all, I’m an engineer, I like planning,” she says in the star podcast “Die Boss”. In an interview with hostess Simone Menne, Farberger talks about her unique perspective on a career in two genders. “It was easier for me to make a career as a man,” she says.
“Now that I live as a woman, I see that I was privileged as a man. I didn’t understand that at the time. (…) I really wrongly thought that the playing field, the platform, was the same for everyone,” he said Farbberger. Today she is ashamed of it. “What I didn’t realize was my privilege as a man to just be myself every day. (…) I could come into the office in any mood: happy, angry or whatever. And my authority was never questioned .” In business, women have a narrower range of acceptable behavior than men.
Farberger tells how her children reacted to coming out
Her management style has therefore changed since she came out. It is important to her to practice diversity, for example to actively seek other opinions. Now she knows that diversity is also better for business. “Fortunately, there are numbers today that prove it.” Numbers, she says, would have convinced her even as a man. In addition, Farbberger tells “Die Boss” why she didn’t dare as a man to take parental leave and how her children reacted to her coming out.
In “The Boss – Power is Female” top women talk to each other: hostess and multi-supervisory board member Simone Menne (including BMW, Deutsche Post DHL, Henkel) meets female bosses from all areas of society to talk to them about their lives and careers. “Die Boss” appears fortnightly on Wednesdays on stern.de and the stern YouTube channel as well as on Audio Now and all common podcast platforms.
