HU Berlin: more women in science

Brain City Berlin

At the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the proportion of women in professorships has almost doubled in around 15 years. The rate has risen from 20.5 percent in 2008 to 39.8 percent in 2023. The gender ratio among academic staff at HU Berlin is already balanced: The proportion of women here is 51.1 per cent. Brain City Berlin has around 36 per cent full-time female professors – putting it ahead of the rest of Germany.

A great success for Berlin’s most traditional university. However, as the HU Berlin announced, there are still major differences between the individual subject groups. This applies in particular to the still male-dominated STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) as well as law and economics. On average, only 27.5 percent of professors in these subjects are women; 39 percent of the academic staff are women. Across all subjects, however, the proportion of women in top academic positions at HU Berlin is significantly higher than the national average. According to the Federal Statistics Office, this figure was around 28 percent at the end of 2022.

HU President Dr. Julia von Blumenthal emphasised that the university has made great efforts over the past 15 years to move closer to the goal of gender equality. A centralised equality concept has been implemented there since 2013: The Caroline von Humboldt+ programme brings together all of the university’s equal opportunities measures. Strategic measures are developed as part of the programme for all career stages, from schoolgirls to students, doctoral candidates and postdocs through to professors. At the same time, responsibility for equal opportunities was assigned to the President. “We have succeeded in anchoring equality as a task in the university’s structures and professionalising it,” said Julia von Blumenthal. “We want to improve further the compatibility of family and career and further reduce the existing gender pay gap in order to create a fair and forward-looking working environment.”

Like the Freie Universität Berlin, the HU Berlin also joined the voluntary commitment “Towards greater gender equality in appointments” (link in German only) presented by the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK) in July 2024. It sets out five specific goals, including the active recruitment of female candidates for professorships, the establishment of gender-equitable appointment procedures and areas of action and measures to reduce structural gender inequalities further.

Five Berlin universities and colleges – Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, Alice Salomon University of Applied Sciences, BHT Berliner Hochschule für Technik and Ernst Busch University of Theatre Arts – were also selected for funding in the first round of the Joint Science Conference’s (GWK) Female Professors Programme 2030 at the beginning of 2024. The dual strategy of the program, which is supported by the Federal and State governments with a total of 320 million euros (link in Germn only): to bring more women into leadership positions in higher education and to strengthen the equality policy structures at universities. TU Berlin was awarded the title of “University with Strong Gender Equality” by the GWK.

Incidentally, ASH Berlin holds the leading position in Berlin when it comes to equality. Around 70 per cent of professors (pdf in German only) at Germany’s largest SAGE university (Social Work, Health, Education and Training) are women; the proportion of women among students there is 75 per cent. In a nationwide comparison of Federal states, Brain City Berlin is at the forefront when it comes to equality: with 36 percent of full-time professors being women (as of 2022, link in German only). Saarland is at the bottom of the list with 23 percent. (vdo)