Professorinnenprogramm 2030

We need more women in academia. The numbers tell a clear story: gender parity is still a long way off at German universities. Three out of four W3 professorships in Germany are held by men. The University of Mannheim is no exception, though it is now stepping up its efforts to change that. One important part of that push is its participation in the “Professorinnenprogramm 2030” — the competitive federal and state governments’ program for women professors.

Porträtbilder von Marie-Luis Merten, Pooja Rani und Simone Rademacher, die mit bunten Farben grafisch illustriert wurden. — Prof. Dr. Marie-Luis Merten, Dr. Pooja Rani and Dr. Simone Rademacher (from left to right)

Walk across campus, have lunch in the Mensa among students, or wait for a cappuccino at Café EO, and you would not think men are overrepresented at the University of Mannheim. So why is it still such a challenge to appoint more women professors? “At the student level, there is no gender gap — every year, roughly equal numbers of men and women begin their studies here,” says University President Thomas Fetzer. He points to what is often called the leaky pipeline, using Mannheim’s own figures to illustrate it: “As academic careers progress, the proportion of women steadily declines. Women make up 51.6 percent of postdocs, but that figure drops to 34.3 percent at the W1 level and to 24.5 percent among permanent W3 professorships.”

The university’s interim target on the road to parity is clear: by 2030, women should hold 30 percent of W3 professorships at the University of Mannheim. A major milestone in that effort has been the university’s success in the “Professorinnenprogramm 2030.” In the very first round of applications, Mannheim secured funding for three professorships with its gender equality strategy. For Fetzer, that is an important achievement, because the program makes it possible to raise the proportion of women professors in a targeted, structural way. “The Professorinnenprogramm 2030 is a joint federal and state initiative designed to increase the number of women in top academic positions,” he says. “Its five-year funding period also gives us the stability we need to plan ahead.”

That support is already having an effect. Three women have been appointed under the program — two at the School of Business Informatics and Mathematics (WIM) and one at the School of Humanities. That was a deliberate strategic choice: by decision of the President’s Office, two of the three funded positions were used for appointments made in anticipation of future vacancies in schools where women are especially underrepresented, so the program could have an immediate effect. At WIM, the share of women professors will rise from 15.8 to 23.8 percent as a result of the new appointments.

Beyond the appointments

For Fetzer, participation in the Professorinnenprogramm 2030 sends a clear message, both inside and outside the university: Mannheim is serious about advancing women in academia. And the program’s impact on campus extends well beyond the three appointments themselves.

One longstanding measure that has proven especially valuable is FAiR@UMA (Family Assistance in Research), which can now continue. It allows women researchers with caregiving responsibilities to apply for funding for student assistants. Care work here includes not only childcare but also caring for relatives — an issue that is becoming increasingly important in an aging society. Further measures are also in the works. Family Services is currently developing additional services, counseling, and practical solutions to help employees balance family and work. Support for early-career women researchers is set to expand as well.

Text: Jule Leger / April 2026

Short profiles of the three professors

Marie-Luis Merten was appointed to the Chair of German Linguistics in August 2025, succeeding Angelika Storrer. Her research focuses on language in digital communication, especially recurring forms, structures, and patterns. Her work sits at the intersection of media linguistics and sociolinguistics, and increasingly also of language and politics. In a new project, for example, she analyzes hashtag debates such as #WirSindDasStadtbild, in which political statements are picked up, reframed ironically, and reshaped through language.

Simone Rademacher is a renowned scholar of mathematical physics. Her research combines state-of-the-art methods from analysis, probability theory, and quantum mechanics. She is joining Mannheim from LMU Munich, where her recent work has included the mathematical description of Bose-Einstein condensates and effective equations. Her distinctions include an ISTplus Postdoctoral Fellowship supported by the European Union under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Program, as well as a scholarship from the German Academic Scholarship Foundation.

Pooja Rani works at the intersection of software engineering, sustainability, and artificial intelligence. Her goal is to design technologies that enable people to act more responsibly. One of the questions she explores is how software systems and user interfaces can be designed to make the energy use of codebases and AI-driven processes visible, so that users can make informed, more sustainable decisions. Before beginning her doctorate at the University of Bern in 2018, Rani spent four years working as a software engineer in industry. Since 2022, she has been a senior researcher at the University of Zurich.