The University of Bremen has chalked up yet another success in the area of gender mainstreaming: Within the context of the second round of the Female Professor Program sponsored by the German Ministry for Education and Research and the Federal States, the University has been granted funding for new positions to be filled by female professors. In the meantime, two excellent appointees have already been found to fill new professorial posts in the Faculties of Economics and Social Sciences. The forthcoming funding will also be used to finance the “Perspective Doctorate” project, which addresses female doctoral students in the humanities and social sciences. And then there will still be enough to finance the two summer universities, informatica feminale and the Female-Engineer Summer University. All three projects have already been running for some time at the University of Bremen, and with great success.
“The new finance granted by the federal government is welcome recognition for the years of effort put into achieving more gender equality at our University”, says the Director of Finance and Administration, Dr. Martin Mehrtens. Gender mainstreaming has long been a guiding principle at the University of Bremen. Dr. Mehrtens adds: “You can be sure we will continue along the same path in future.” Within the context of Female Professor Program II the University is able to appoint three new female professors in all. For the first five years these new permanent positions will be funded by knock-on financing amounting to 75,000 euros a year.
Top ratings for the University of Bremen
The underlying reason for acquiring the new funding has been the convincing gender mainstreaming policies pursued over the years throughout the whole institution. Together with the measures established by the University to ensure equal gender opportunity, this has put it among the few German universities that received top ratings in the evaluation process attached to the Female Professor Program II. The leader of the Bureau for Equal Opportunity/Anti-discrimination, Anneliese Niehoff, commented: “We are very pleased, and the newly acquired funding will give a further boost to our gender mainstreaming efforts”. Currently the share of female professors at the University of Bremen is at 26 percent well above the German average (21 percent). The aim is to improve on this further, and especially to increase the share of young female scholars and scientists at the University. Other good news is that in this area the University saw an increase of over 40 percent over the past few years.
Praise from the German Research Foundation
Already prior to the success in the Female Professor Program II, the German Research Foundation had cause to praise the University of Bremen on several occasions for its exemplary gender mainstreaming measures. Last year, for instance, the foundation once again ranked the University tops in the area of gender equality in research, confirming the established concept and its continuation via additional innovative ideas. According to the German Research Foundation, the gender mainstreaming measures and structures established at the University of Bremen are filled with life. Together with measures designed to attract females to the natural sciences and engineering disciplines, it selected the numerous programs for the advancement of women at all stages of their career for special praise. The foundation also applauded the targeted cooperation between the different Faculties and the University management as an example of good practice. Moreover, the foundation is impressed by the fact that the University has earmarked funds accruing from the Excellence Initiative for a female professor program of its own.
About the Professor Program:
In 2007 the Federal States and the German Ministry for Education and Research launched the Female Professor Program to boost the number of female professors at German universities. Following its success, in 2012 it was decided to prolong the program. The first and second female professor programs were each funded in amounts of 150 million, financed fifty-fifty by the Ministry and Federal States. In the event their gender mainstreaming concepts receive a positive evaluation, universities, universities of applied sciences, and art universities compete for the funding of up to three female appointments to permanent W2 and W3 professorships.
You can find more details of the University of Bremen’s gender mainstreaming measures on the webpages of the Bureau for Equal Opportunity (in German only).
If you would like to have more information on this topic, feel free to contact:
University of Bremen
Bureau for Equal Opportunity/Anti-discrimination
Anneliese Niehoff, Dipl.-Pol.
Phone: +49 421 218-60181
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