Equal opportunities in figures
What is the percentage of women at the professorship level at WU? How many men graduate from a WU degree program? And how have these figures developed in recent years? These and other data on gender relations are collected annually at WU and published in the Equal Opportunities Report.
Since the reporting year 2019, the Equal Opportunities Report has been published as an online version with interactive elements, so that users can adapt the evaluations to their own interests. For example, they can click on the personnel category or organizational unit they want to view in more detail. We recommend viewing the presentation in full screen mode. To do so, please click on button "To full screen mode".
Important developments in 2024:
The percentage of women in senior faculty positions (full professors) rose slightly to 34.55 %. The percentage of women among newly recruited professors was 50 %. In total, two people were appointed full professors pursuant to § 98 of the Universities Act and started working at WU in 2024, including one woman and one man. However, due to the small size of the absolute numbers (n[female professors]=36.50 FTE[1]) and the underlying total number of employees in this personnel category (n[professors]=105.65 FTE), short-term fluctuations in these percentages should be interpreted with caution, as any individual (female) professor who leaves the university or goes on a leave of absence is enough to significantly change this ratio. WU is implementing a number of measures to further increase the percentage of women in senior faculty (see our web pages on equal opportunities and gender equality).
At the associate professor level the percentage of women increased by around five percentage points to 49.9 % (34.95 FTE).
At the senior assistant professor level the downward trend of recent years has been stopped: the percentage of women rose by two percentage points to 40.6% (8.63 FTE).
As in the previous year, women accounted for 46% of tenure-track positions[2] (29 FTE).
Anotable development is the decline in the percentage of women at the level of assistant professors (post-docs) which fell by approximately four percentage points to 40.6% (70.75 FTE).
At the level of teaching and research associates (pre-docs) the percentage of women dropped slightly to 49.0 % (162.55 FTE).
The percentage of women in academic staff decreased overall by 1.3 percentage points to 44.1% (385.1 FTE).
A remarkable development is the increase in the percentage of women holding leadership positions at departments and institutes, which rose by approximately 10 percentage points. After falling to 25% and 27% in 2022 and 2023 respectively, the percentage of women in scientific management positions rose to 37% in 2024. This increase is primarily due to two women taking over the leadership of two departments, as no woman had held a department leadership position in the preceding years.
There has been a decline in the share of women at the second and third management levels in WU’s administrative staff: At the second management level (heads of WU’s service units), the share of women among the management personnel decreased by nearly 5 percentage points to 39.8%. At the third management level (heads of individual divisions within service units) the share of women fell by about 1 percentage point to 50.8%. There is still a considerable gap between these figures and the overall percentage of women among WU’s administrative staff (68 %).
In the student population, the downward trendamong students at the bachelor's level continued in 2024, with the percentage of women decreasing to 45.0%. There was a slight increase in the percentage of women among master's students (49.2%), while the percentage of women among PhD/doctoral students decreased slightly to 44.5%.
In terms of degrees awarded at WU, positive developments were observed in the percentage of degrees awarded to women: The percentage of degrees awarded to women at bachelor’s and master’s level increased by approximately one percentage point each, reaching 48.2% (bachelor’s degrees) and 50.4% (master’s degrees). The percentage of PhD/ doctoral degrees awarded to women saw a significant increase of nearly 30 percentage points, rising from 30.4% to 57.4%. This trend continues the strong fluctuations noted in previous years.
Positive trends were observed in the percentage of degrees awarded to women at WU. At both the bachelor's and master's levels, the share of degrees awarded to women increased by approximately one percentage point, reaching 48.2% and 50.4%, respectively. A particularly notable development occurred at the PhD/doctoral level, where the percentage of degrees awarded to women rose sharply from 30.4% to 57.4%—an increase of nearly 30 percentage points. This significant shift continues the pattern of strong fluctuations seen in previous years.
[1] Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) is a unit that indicates the workload of an employed person in a way that makes workloads comparable across various contexts. For example, one FTE equals one employee working full-time, while two employees working half-time would also equal one FTE.
[2] Tenure-track positions are initially fixed-term positions subject to fulfillment of a qualification agreement, which then automatically results in permanent employment.