Opinions

Equal Opportunities: we need sanctions that bite

By Jutta Allmendinger und Alice Hohn

Lola runs. And a lot of other women are running with her, overtaking the men on the educational path, climbing the academic career ladder. 56 percent of university graduates in Germany are female, and 41 percent of doctorates are awarded to women. But there it stops: only about 22 percent of those qualified to become professors – “Habilitierte” – are women; only 15 percent of professors and just 7 percent of rectors. Things are progressing: these figures have been improving over the last few years. But at the rate we are going at the moment, it will take until 2070 before any kind of parity is achieved. Can we afford to wait?

Often enough it is assumed that women themselves are at fault. They choose not to go for the top careers, we are told. But choosing not to do something assumes that the doors are open for you to do it in the first place. And this is clearly not the case as the lopsided growth at the beginning of the career path shows. At some stage, one of the doors is followed by a revolving door which does not lead anywhere. The explanation is certainly not a shortage of programmes promoting women. But they are often ineffective – because they are unspecified. They fail to quantify the hoped-for proportion of women. Nobody has to worry about painful consequences if the quotas are not met – there are no quotas to meet.

Not enough old girls’ networks

There are a number of specifically German problems involved in this: many of the rules of the academic game are still difficult to penetrate. When it comes to careers the more informal the decision-taking, the more influential the networks. However, due to the extremely low proportion of female professors women often do not have an old girls’ network to fall back on. By contrast to men, they tend to be mentored for the here and now rather than for future careers. The significant numbers of women in academia immediately below professorial level proves that short- and medium-term cooperation is extremely useful because women are brilliant at cooperating and doing the preparatory work; they also complete research reports and have proved themselves to be excellent teachers. But in the long run, you have to publish articles in established journals if you want to have a career in academia; being a good teacher will not get you far. As a result, it is absolutely essential that established academics, be they male or female, consciously help to induct and introduce young women researchers into the scientific community.

Experienced female professors – and the odd male professor – are a help when it comes to opening doors. As mentors, they can provide the background and skills that get neglected during academic training: strategic knowledge on where you should place yourself on the academic employment market and broadlybased preparation for doing so. Mentoring is a feature of wellstructured programmes at Graduate Schools which are gradually emerging in Germany.

Looking abroad for models

Casting an eye to other countries reveals that training research talent at Graduate Schools is the rule and not the exception – and that it means significantly less legwork for other projects, a better infrastructure for combining career and family, more institutionalised mentoring and coaching, greater transparency and more predictability. Graduate Schools do away with the dependency on a single professor: you become an independent participant in a competitive process and are automatically supervised by several university teachers. So far so good.

Lola runs, and the principle of independence, the distinct structures and transparent procedures have to be upheld. This means: assistant professors instead of academic assistants, independence instead of binding directives, tenure track instead of three-year contracts, a small and flexible teaching load instead of a large and inflexible one.

It is quite obvious: our international competitors are not asleep on the job, they are running ahead. We need precise targets – and sanctions that bite. If we do not act now, Germany will miss the final. And we shall have to wait until 2070.

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