In Profile: Alexandra Niessen-Ruenzi

On the way to her office in an unassuming building in L9, visitors pass a display case filled with printouts of her media interviews. Headlines read, “Women, Take Action” and “Why Financial Planning Should Be a Women’s Issue — and Still Isn’t.” Niessen-Ruenzi is regularly quoted by outlets such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and The New York Times. In 2025 alone, she gave more than 20 interviews, not including those for academic journals.

Niessen-Ruenzi, now 45, holds the Chair of Corporate Governance at the University of Mannheim. Gender issues in finance are her central research focus — and a topic of ongoing public concern. Just days after our conversation, the figures for the 2025 gender pay gap were released. Even after adjusting for factors such as part-time work and the fact that women are more likely to work in lower-paid occupations, women with comparable qualifications and career trajectories still earn six percent less than their male colleagues.

Niessen-Ruenzi studies the causes of this gap. In a recent project, she examines whether women working in China’s financial sector show any measurable performance differences after returning from maternity leave that might justify lower pay. “I was thrilled when an Australian colleague told me that these data are collected in China,” she says. “We can see exactly when women take maternity leave. And the performance analysis shows that those who return perform no differently from other employees.”

Pursuing a topic against resistance

Niessen-Ruenzi is now regarded as one of the leading scholars in her field. Her extensive research looks at issues like how men and women invest their money, whether their behavior differs, and what shapes their investment decisions. She has also examined whether the performance of a fund depends on whether it is managed by a woman or a man.

Today the field is well established, but early in her career she had to fight for recognition. She recalls one conference at which a heated debate broke out among male audience members during her presentation. “I struggled to regain the floor,” she says. “In the end, I received the best paper award. So apparently the topic resonated after all.”

At her alma mater, the University of Cologne, she encountered more skepticism. While working as a research assistant, she identified a significant gender imbalance among U.S. fund managers and wanted to pursue the topic in her doctoral research. She was advised against it. “Perhaps it was concern — a well-intentioned warning that I was working in a niche area and might be putting my academic career at risk,” she says. “But I think that approach is entirely misguided. You have to do the research that excites you — and address the questions you truly care about.”

A passion for mathematically measurable patterns

She followed that conviction, continuing to work on her chosen topic during her doctorate — much of it conducted in the United States. Her enthusiasm remains unmistakable when she speaks about her research. Initially, however, it was not obvious where her academic interests would lead. Her father, himself a professor of economics, hoped his eldest daughter might choose one of his own private intellectual passions: history, philosophy, or literature. During a six-month interdisciplinary foundation program her parents encouraged her to undertake, it became clear that this was not the path she would take. “I attended a microeconomics lecture and found it completely fascinating,” she recalls. “I had never seen human behavior represented in a supply-and-demand curve before. By contrast, the content in German studies — phonology, morphology, semantics — rather put me off.” She laughs. “For my father, my decision to study business administration was something of a minor catastrophe.”

Her subsequent career suggests she made the right choice. At 29, she was appointed junior professor at Mannheim. A six-year endowed professorship followed, and since 2018 she has held a full professorship. At the Business School, she is one of six women professors among a total of 35. To support female students in particular, she founded the course “Women in Leadership” at the university’s Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences (GESS). “I thought about the information and support I would have needed 20 years ago,” she says. “That’s how I designed the course. I teach it in the hope of equipping young women with the tools they need for leadership careers.”

Toward a more gender-equal society

Questions of gender equality are also present in her private life. Her research inevitably shapes how she raises her two daughters, twin girls of elementary-school age. Her analytical perspective has influenced them as well. “They notice when gender stereotypes are reproduced,” she says. “For example, when advertising places the man at the center and the woman somewhere in the background.”

At home with her daughters and through her publications, Niessen-Ruenzi works to raise awareness of these issues. Her broader aim is clear: “I want to contribute to more gender equality in society — by documenting where disparities exist and by investigating their causes, whether structural barriers or deficits that need to be addressed.” Policymakers occasionally consult her as an expert, though she approaches such requests with caution. “I don’t want to be harnessed to any particular policy agenda,” she says. “That would not be conducive to academic independence.” Her many interviews and media appearances may in any case have the greater impact — making the topic visible to a wider public, conveying its complexity, and drawing attention to structural weaknesses.

Text: Katja Bauer / April 2026