Women in science: "An interdisciplinary range of courses appeals to girls interested in STEM"

Dear Dr. Tonisch, just under 30 percent of all students at the TU Ilmenau are female. Women make up just under a quarter of all doctoral students at TU Ilmenau. A total of ten female professors teach and conduct research at the university. The so-called cascade model states that the higher the career level in science, the fewer women are represented. How can this phenomenon be explained?

The idea behind the cascade model says that you can only ever recruit a certain proportion from the previous career stage. So if you want to appoint more female professors, you need to have enough women with the appropriate qualifications, such as a post-doctoral degree in the respective scientific field. These, in turn, require a sufficiently high number of women doing their doctorate, from which the need for an even higher proportion of women in the group of students arises. From an equality perspective, it means addressing the proportion of women at all levels from girls interested in studying to professors.

You yourself are a scientist at the Technical Physics I Group and at the same time the Deputy Equal Opportunites Officer at the TU Ilmenau. What hurdles do you see for women in science?

From my point of view, one of the biggest hurdles is the temporary employment system at universities and scientific research institutions, which is quite formative for scientific careers. At the age of 25-35, of all times, the desire to start a family meets the precarious phase of qualification for doctoral and post-doctoral positions, which is characterized by chain and follow-up contracts. Also, the demand for scientific mobility in the curriculum vitae, such as moving between universities and scientific institutions, proof of longer stays abroad, and regular participation in conferences held around the world contradict a possible family foundation and the dual role as scientist and mother.Of course, this hurdle exists in a corresponding way for male scientists as well, but young women still more often make a conscious decision for a better work-life balance and thus against an often uncertain future in the scientific field.

STEM subjects such as engineering or physics in particular have a low proportion of women nationwide. Later, there is a shortage of female specialists and managers in these fields. What are the implications of this for research, industry and our society, e.g. keyword Gender Data Gap?

An interesting example of missing data was the presentation of the first female crash test dummy in November last year. A typical crash test dummy is 1.75 m tall and weighs 78 kg. All the safety features in the car - i.e. seat shell, seat belts, airbags, etc. - are adapted to him. However, women are not simply smaller versions of men; their center of gravity is lower on average, their pelvis is wider and their neck muscles are weaker. As a result, to this day their risk of injury is higher than that of men in comparably serious car accidents. The situation is similar in many areas, from medicine to technical equipment to urban planning - where women are not taken into account, they face disadvantages, even if medical professionals, engineers or urban planners do not intend this.

In recent years, the TU Ilmenau has succeeded in increasing the proportion of women in the mathematics and natural sciences subject group. How has it managed to do this?

It is a well-known fact that girls interested in science and technology disproportionately often opt for interdisciplinary courses - in this respect, expanding the range of interdisciplinary courses is the means of choice for increasing the proportion of female first-year students. In mathematics, the increase in the proportion of women is largely due to the emphasis on business mathematics in the master's program; here, the proportion of women will be 39% in the winter semester of 2022. However, the Biotechnical Chemistry program also has a comparatively high proportion of women at 40% overall (39% in the Bachelor's degree, 44% in the Master's degree) with a very good transition rate to the Master's degree.

The United Nations has established the International Day of Women and Girls in Science to promote the access of women and girls to science. TU Ilmenau also starts promoting STEM among schoolgirls at an early stage and offers them a range of study orientation programs - including the summer university. How do these offers help young women find a career?

The Thuringian Coordination Office for Science and Technology (thueko) was founded in 1996 at the TU Ilmenau to develop and offer orientation programs for girls interested in science and technology. Currently, a summer university, a MINT assessment process and the Campus Thuringia Tour take place annually. Female students go to schools as MINT ambassadors to tell schoolgirls about their studies at TU Ilmenau. These and other offers help in particular to make a technical or scientific study imaginable, to get insights into the everyday life of studies and into professional fields - in order to be able to make a qualified decision for a study afterwards. Engineering courses in particular are still perceived today as having a male connotation, so that young women often think carefully about their choice of study and carefully weigh up their own inclinations and abilities.

Equality work at the TU Ilmenau

According to §4 of the Thuringian Equality Act (ThürGleichG), equality is a legal mandate at Thuringian universities. Embedded in overall social processes, equality and equal opportunities are understood and lived as an important cross-sectional task at TU Ilmenau. This includes the removal of barriers in order to enable the equal participation of all university members in university life in research and teaching. Core elements of equal opportunity work are target group-specific information, counseling and support services as well as (further) networking and consolidation of existing equal opportunity measures and organizational structures. In October 2006, the TU Ilmenau was the first university in the Free State of Thuringia to successfully apply for the TOTAL-EQUALITY award, which it received for the 6th time in a row in 2022. In addition, the TU Ilmenau was honored with the Sustainability Award for practiced equal opportunities for women and men in the workplace.

As the Deputy Equal Opportunites Officer  Dr.-Ing. Katja Tonisch is the contact person for all employees and students of the TU Ilmenau for questions and advice on the topic of equality. She is committed to equal cooperation between women and men at the university. With its work, it supports the university management in the realization of the legally anchored equality of opportunity for the sexes and works towards the elimination of existing disadvantages. Together with the Equal Opportunity Council, promotional measures and campaigns are realized.

Currently, 1381 female students are studying at the TU Ilmenau, including 122 doctoral students. 201 women out of a total of 798 scientific employees are employed at the TU Ilmenau. They make up 25 percent of the scientific staff. Ten female professors out of a total of 98 work at the university. The degree programs with the highest proportion of women include Media and Communication Science, Media Economics, Applied Media and Communication Studies, Biomedical Engineering and Miniaturized Biotechnology.