International Women's Day 2021 on March 8

TUM launches new support program for female lecturers

The Technical University of Munich (TUM) considers equality and the promotion of diversity among its talents to be a moral mandate which is central to the TUM mission of excellence in research, teaching and innovation. A number of strategic measures and support formats are succeeding and have significantly increased the share of women at various career levels, as TUM President Prof.

Thomas F. Hofmann observes on the occasion of International Women's Day 2021 on March 8:
"Over the past 15 years we have for example succeeded in raising the share of women appointed to professorships from 9% to 20.9%. This is the outcome of intensive searches for internationally experienced female scientists, in concert with the central integration of women professors both on faculty recruitment commissions and as reviewers in the external evaluation of candidates. We are still far from satisfied; nevertheless the 39% share of women among the 145 talented young individuals currently appointed to tenure track professorships makes me optimistic that we will be able to significantly increase the share of woman professors at TUM in the years to come.“

However, there is great room for improvement in the share of women among the lecturers and honorary professors who enrich the teaching of TUM students with their diverse range of practical experience gained in business, politics and society. "With a share of only 5%, women are embarrassingly underrepresented in this area," TUM President Hofmann says. In order to change this situation, TUM will provide newly recruited women lecturers with research assistants and material support for expanding the scope of their teaching materials and curricula.

TUM Senior Vice President Talent Management and Diversity, Prof. Claudia Peus, intends to strengthen the structural basis for recruiting suitable women candidates: "Vice Deans Talent Management and Diversity will in the future intensify the proactive search for female lecturers at the executive level of the respective TUM Schools. We are thus creating central responsibility at the School level and will be able to provide the best possible support for the individual efforts of our professors when recruiting lecturers."