Gender Equality

Why Equality?

The activities in the field of gender equality are based on the long-standing observation that the scientific potential of women, despite their high qualifications, is often not transformed into a gain in status in the academic world. This leads to a rapid decline in the proportion of women in the academic population between the start of their studies, their degree and the individual career stages of an academic career.

51% of Austrians are women. They are at least as well educated as men. 54% of students at Austrian universities are women, at our university the figure is 62%. But the share of professorships is only 34,5%. This disproportion is due to outdated patriarchal structures - we speak of a sexist, discriminatory deficit in university culture.

This situation is to be countered by our gender-oriented personnel development/training measures. The key question for the content design is: How can women transform their scientific qualification into access to status in the scientific community?

The aim is to establish a gender symmetric culture at Graz Universities and to support gender equality measures.

Since 2001, when Graz University, Graz University of Technology, Graz Medical University and Graz University of Music and Performing Arts created the cooperation "Potentials", they have been working together to offer and implement gender-specific measures to promote women beyond the disciplines. The cooperation comprises a package of measures consisting mainly of continuing education seminars, orientation workshops for female students and graduates, application training and one-year career programs for female scientists and gender competence trainings for the whole staff.

For mentees of our University of Graz there is also a Workshop in english. In addition, there are further training measures for executives and lecturers: Mentoring - Jour Fixe and workshops, seminars. A handbook was published in German and English.

The current gender equality situation is measured in the form of the women's advancement reports and the brochure "Figures, Facts, Analyses", which gives a detailed description of gender relations at our University of Graz, interpretes them and points out where action is needed.