Projects at the h_da’s Equal Opportunity Office

The Equal Opportunity Officer and those involved in equal opportunity initiatives at the University are constantly exploring what measures, tools and strategies can help achieve and sustain balanced gender representation across all levels.

The aim is to provide consistent, coordinated support for gender equity—from the start of a student’s academic journey through to their career as a professor. To make this a reality, the Equal Opportunity Office has designed, piloted and rolled out a range of projects focused on fostering greater gender equality.

A large portion of these projects are part of the Women in Professorships programme,
through which the Federal Ministry of Education and Research has provided funding to the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences since 2015. The programme objective is to sustainably improve the representation of women at all qualification levels in the academic system and to increase the number of women researchers in top academic positions. Individual projects are part of federal or Hessian initiatives or are funded by other project management organisations[T/E1]  such as the Hessian Ministry of Science and Art (Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst).

To ensure various target groups are supported in a gender-equitable way, the projects to realise equal opportunities focus on four stages:

Projects for the transition from school to university
Projects to support equal opportunity during studies
Projects to support equal opportunity for (early career) women researchers
Projects to anchor equal opportunity at the Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences