Faculty of Social Science

In 1987 an action plan for women was passed by the RUB senate. The plan consists of a bundle of measures intended to abolish or diminish the structural discrimination of women at the university...

The De-central Officers for Gender Equality of the Faculty of Social Science

The de-central officers for gender equality (or ombudswomen) are the elected representatives of women. The de-central officers for gender equality at the faculties are the representatives of the full-time officers for gender equality on university level.

Ideally every status group (students, staff, administration) will have its own officer for gender equality. When the first action plan for women was presented in the Faculty of Social Science in 1989, only a third of the students were female. Today the proportion of male and female students is about equal. The situation is about the same with the student assistants. This, however, hides the fact that the proportion is increasingly worse on the more qualified level (better paid and higher standing).

Even at a Social Science faculty like ours only three of twelve professors are female. When our Faculty presented the second action plan for women in 2001 the aim was to attract attention to this predicament and to push the promotion as well as the occupational equality of women. The elementary approach is the "reconciliation of family and studying /work" and "equal participation of men and women in academic life".

The officer for gender equality (ombudswoman) of the Faculty takes part in the appointment procedure (new professors) in an advisory and interceding capacity and represents the officer for gender equality of the RUB in these boards.

Additionally the ombudswoman always lends an ear to problems and will be there for you in difficult situations and discrimination matters.

Since the winter term 2004/2005 a project on family-friendly studying has been carried out, on the basis of which there is now guiding and consulting for studying parents and a mentoring taking place once a term (watch out for notices) since the summer term of 2005. Since the winter term 2005/2006 an internal mailing list is available for studying parents (if you are interested contact gleichstellungstud@rub.de).

You can find results in the leaflet "Elternfreundliches Studium an der Sowi-Fakultät" [parent-friendly studying at the Social Science Faculty], which serves students with family care tasks as consulting material and gives other interested people a glimpse into the structures of a life between lectures, part-time job and childcare.

During the term there are office hours when you can come with your problems to the students’ officer for gender equality at the Faculty.