Gender Equality

AU, as the host university has taken, for two decades now, a sustainable approach to equal opportunities with both a large degree of commitment and great success. The legal requirement for the active enforcement of equal opportunities for women and men is given priority in committees and at all levels of decision-making. While the main emphasis is on increasing the number of female students and academics at all professional levels (without compromising quality), there exist ongoing initiatives for increasing the proportion of men in areas in which they are still clearly under-represented.

In May 2003, an Equal Opportunities Working Group was set up at the university in order to firmly embed the concept of Gender Mainstreaming into all areas of the university. In 2005, the University and all five Schools signed a joint agreement on gender equality, http://www.frauenbeauftragte.uni-erlangen.de/zielvereinbarungen/. In doing so FAU became the first University in Bavaria to implement measures for the advancement of women. The success of this approach was acknowledged in 2008, when the University received an award from the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts for the best concept by a university for the realization of the requirement for gender equality.

In 2006 the University signed an agreement on joint objectives together with the Bavarian State Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts, in which the University declared the advancement of women as an integral part of its strategic planning. In March 2008 further objectives were agreed within the framework of the German Research Foundation (DFG) research-oriented equal opportunities standards. Following the success of an audit in April 2008, the University was officially certified as a “family-friendly university”. In 2011, FAU passed a new Equal Opportunities plan, http://www.frauenbeauftragte.uni-erlangen.de/gleichstellung. In it the University states that an integral part of the mission statement of the University is the strategic adjustment of the Equal Opportunities policy and its structural integration to the University’s mission. In so doing, the University commits itself to Diversity Management.

The female mentoring program has two main objectives: a) to increase the number of female doctorates in technical disciplines and in particular in the SAOT and b) to improve the opportunities for successful professional careers in academia or industry. It starts already at the pre-university level and is continued at the undergraduate level. Female mentoring has a long tradition at FAU as well as in the faculties involved in the SAOT program. Some ongoing FAU programmes in support of female mentoring are:

• ARIADNE: a mentoring program that advances young female scientists (ranging from undergraduate to doctoral students) especially in fields with comparatively low female participation. This program started in 2003 at the faculty of engineering with great success and was extended in 2005 to the faculty of sciences, in 2008 to the faculty of medicine and in 2009 to the faculty of philosophy. This initiative offers an extensive support framework whose key components are: a) customized mentoring, where the interests of each mentee are carefully matched with the qualifications of the mentor (out of a pool of ARIADNE mentors), b) a wide selection of career and soft skills seminars, c) many opportunities for career-oriented networking.
• Academy for female students and young academics: a summer school whose goal is to create opportunities for innovative and multi-disciplinary research. The academy provides a forum for exchange of ideas between experienced female academics, practitioners, women working in politics and business, as well as researchers in the early stages of their careers.
• Girls-and-Engineering Week: a weeklong internship for female high school students in grades 8-12 for a hands-on demonstration of what it entails to be an engineer or physicist. This “try-out” week has been organized since 1999 by the Women Representatives of the FE. It takes place during the last week of the summer holidays. It is a weeklong set of workshops where different laboratories of the institutes of the FE and FS, and the Fraunhofer institutes in Erlangen, offer the opportunity to participating female high school students to perform experimental work. The goal of this internship is to present to participating students what studies and a career in engineering or physics and entails and help the girls overcome possible reservations concerning technical professions.
• Girls’ Day: part of a nationwide initiative that offers female schoolchildren an insight to careers in engineering. Its aim is to increase the awareness of female schoolchildren regarding university study and the working environment in subject areas where women are typically under-represented. As part of career counseling, female student at grade 5 or higher can spend a day at the University of Erlangen. During their visit they tour different engineering departments, perform short practical experiments and are given the opportunity to converse with researchers.

The activities of the FE in the field of gender equality were awarded the Equal Opportunity Prize of the University in December 2005.

A congruent gender mainstreaming action plan is also in place within the framework of the Excellence Initiative. Since the establishment of SAOT, the gender equality representative of the FE has always been a member of SAOT. The gender equality representative of FE is, according to the SAOT regulations, a regular member of the SAOT Executive Committee with voting privileges. The GE representative heads the equal opportunities team in advanced optical technologies (EAOT), whose task is to support female Master and Doctoral students. The EAOT has created its own website (http://www.equal.aot.uni-erlangen.de/index.shtml) providing an extraordinary breadth of information (in English of course). The web-site contains an extensive list of initiatives for the support and encouragement of female candidates: detailed information on subject-specific mentoring, travel and conference support, seminars, networking, childcare etc.

Within SAOT, female mentoring and supervision aims at the development of self-confidence, social competence and strong communication abilities. Measures undertaken by SAOT for the promotion of equal opportunities and the support of DCs include:

• Establishment of an SAOT Equal Opportunities website with particular emphasis on SAOT female DCs http://www.equal.aot.uni-erlangen.de/
• A permanent seat (with voting privileges) for the equal-opportunities representative in the SAOT executive committee. (The professor responsible for equal opportunities at the FE has always been member of the SAOT before becoming responsible for equal opportunities at the faculty.)
• Travel grants for financial support of female DCs offered by the Women’s office of the University.
• Soft skills seminars about women-specific topics as organized by the Women’s Office of the University in cooperation with the Women Representatives of the faculties involved in the SAOT program.
• Active participation at the Summer Academy (Ferienakademie) in Tutzing with lectures and round table discussion for the development of social competences.
• Supervision and mentoring of talented female undergraduate students and school girls in the framework of projects ARIADNE, Girls and Engineering Week and Girls’ Day.
• Expansion of the mentoring program ARIADNE to postdocs and junior faculty.
• Guest lectures of female academics.

In general,  SAOT’s action plan regarding the recruitment and support of female DCs and the promotion of equal opportunities focuses on: gender-balanced distribution of management and project functions; balanced allocation of working groups; communication, cooperation and support structures that are adapted to personal and family situations; flexible work time and study models, scrutiny of the possibility of part-time professorships, individually adaptable part-time research; gender-neutral symbolism and language in calls for proposals, applications and study programs; a female and family-oriented grant system.

Supporting personal/family lifestyles is a key component in the success of gender equality programs. With that in mind, SAOT offers family-support initiatives like e-science and childcare. In particular, essential potentials for the improved compatibility of research activities and personal/family lifestyles are to be opened up by means of a comprehensive e-science approach. The virtual mapping of all processes entails, among other things: increased flexibility in terms of location and time; increased individual control of scheduling; individually adaptable qualification processes; ubiquitous, fast, supported access (knowledge management) to all textual resources; improved adaptation of cooperation and communication structures to individual personal and gender-specific circumstances; as well as the facilitation of coordination of all arising daily tasks by means of flexible time budgets.

An important aspect for creating an Equal Opportunity environment is the balance of study, research, work on one hand and family life on the other hand. The University offers through its Family Services, http://www.familienservice.uni-erlangen.de/ a range of services including child and member consultation, crèche places, different emergency programs (Känguru, Penguin, Delfin), a babysitting service, year-round childcare, as well as a “conference service” in the form of childcare during academic functions. Currently the university offers 106 crèche places for employee’s and 86 for students in nearby daycare facilities. It also helps parents to find a place in Erlangen kindergartens for older children, The FAU is committed to family support. For that reason the university is currently constructing its own on-site daycare facilities with 12 crèche , 25 kindergarten and 25 for after-school-care places. These new facilities are scheduled to open by the end of 2013.

SAOT further supports families by providing additional financial support (according to the DFG guidelines) to scholarship holders (male or female), who have one or more children. To ensure childcare services for SAOT doctoral researchers with children, SAOT sponsored 10 000 € (money is taken from the overhead) for the construction of an on-campus childcare facility, which is developed by the FAU for FAU parents.

Percentage of female students at the various levels of study,
as well as postdoctoral fellows and professors
(3-year average: 2008-2010)

Despite the fact that women participation in technical fields, especially at higher educational levels, is relatively low, female participation at SAOT has, so far, surpassed that of related fields. Of course the distribution between the genders differs in the various faculties. While, for example, in 2010 66% of the freshmen at FM were female and 53% at FS, only 24% of the freshmen in FE were female.  As the level of studies increases the percentage of female participants gradually decreases. In comparison, in 2010 in the Department of Physics, only 17% of the undergraduate students are female, with a comparable percentage of doctoral candidates, at 16%. The SAOT has outperformed both the FE and the Department of Physics in female participation with 24% - 33% of the doctoral scholarship holders being female.

The overall university goal is to have, by 2013, 20% of all doctorate degrees in Engineering and 20% of all doctorates in Physics to be earned by females. At SAOT, based on the stronger female participation, we have an even higher goal of 29% - 38%.

The efforts and successes of SAOT on gender mainstreaming also extend to the PIs and mentors. During the 1^st funding period a W1 junior professorship was converted, after negotiations with the state ministry, to a W2 professorship to provide an attractive permanent position for Professor Ekaterina Shamonina – one of the gender equality representatives of FE and SAOT. In March 2011 she left FAU for a reader position at Imperial College London.  She is however, still active as a permanent guest professor mentoring DCs at SAOT. In 2009 the SAOT Young Researcher Award was conferred upon Professor Alexandra Boltasseva from Purdue University (also affiliated with the Technical University Denmark). In summary, during the 1^st funding period the number of female senior scientists at SAOT increased from one PI in 2006 to five in 2011 (two female PIs – Profs. Merklein and Zaumseil – , 2 AIs as permanent guest professors – Profs. Boltasseva and Shamonina- and 1 Ambassador – Prof. Lütjen-Drecoll).

top