Gender Equality Concept of the SFB 803

Gender equity and diversity play a pivotal role in academia and contribute to high quality research. Hence, the SFB803 has established a gender equity and diversity concept which ensures that every participant within the SFB 803 will have an equal opportunity to pursue a scientific career.

Thus the project GenderConsulting in Collaborative Research is supported by the SFB 803 in order to build the infrastructure for sustainable gender equity work in all joint research projects.

In addition, regular workshops on gender equity open to all SFB members are organized to promote awareness and encourage discussion about these issues on all levels of the SFB. We especially focus on workshops and coaching promoting leadership qualities and career development for female PhD students, Postdocs and project leaders.

As part of the public outreach activities SFB@School and "Schupperpraktikum", the SFB hast developed programs to address the next generation of potential scientists and schools directly by illustrating the every-day applications of SFB research topics. Here, especially female pupils are encouraged to discover the potential of an interdisciplinary career in science. More collaborations with similar programs are planned.

In order to enhance the University's family-friendly infrastructure the SFB also helped to fund the installation of a new children's playground at the North campus.


Equal opportunities at the Göttingen campus

The University of Göttingen and the Max Planck Institutes in Göttingen support gender equity and diversity by a number of already established measures and programs.

• The University's central equal opportunities office offers a number of programs as well as coaching and mentoring for female students, scientists and employees.
• The project GenderConsulting in Collaborative Research supports and coordinates the implementation of equal opportunity measures in joint research projects. The Short-Term International Mentorship (STIM) was one of the first measures that has been designed and implemented within this project. They offer female scientists from DFG-funded joint research projects the opportunity to gain valuable experience abroad at an early point in their career and to cultivate new contacts and expand their international network in order to ideally prepare themselves for their later career path.
• A raft of gender equality measures are gathered under the umbrella of the Dorothea Schlözer-Program addressing a range of different target groups, e.g. female academics, academics with family responsibilities and international academics. Among other things, the program supplies young female scientist with fellowships, qualifications and mentoring early in their career.
• A similar program ist the Heidenreich von Siebold Fellowship Program which provides funding for staff and materials for young female principal investigators at the University Medical Center.
• The networking of women in science on the Göttingen campus and abroad in general is established and promoted by the Women's Careers and Networks Symposium (WoCaNet), taking place since 2011 at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and which is supported by the SFBs on the Göttingen Campus.
• The Family Service of the University of Goettingen has made it their priority to initiate measures to adapt working and studying conditions in a way that men and women can coordinate research/studies/job and family life.