Heidelberg: New opportunities for female scientists through equal opportunities program!

Heidelberg: New opportunities for female scientists through equal opportunities program!

On April 8, 2025, the Heidelberg University of Education announced that it had successfully qualified for the 2030 Professor Program (PP 2030). This program promotes equality between women and men in Germany's universities, and the evaluation of the equality concept by an external committee was consistently positive. This means that the university can apply for funding for up to three first-time professors, which will be used for measures to promote equality. In this funding round, a total of 56 universities were selected that are actively working on improving their equality structures.

The female professor program, which has existed since 2008, was developed to increase the proportion of women in top academic positions and to counteract the so-called “leaky pipeline”. This problem describes the decline of female scientists in advanced career stages. While the nationwide proportion of women among professors in Germany is only around 29 percent, at the Heidelberg University of Education it is a remarkable 48.7 percent (as of 2024). The university also has a female proportion of 71.4 percent of students. Nevertheless, the proportion decreases at higher career levels, which makes the goal of the program all the more urgent.

Funding goals and measures

The equality concept of the Heidelberg University of Education focuses on promoting young female scientists. The planned measures include the financing of doctoral and bridging positions for young female scientists. Mid-level academic researchers can also adapt their task profile in order to be able to carry out research activities better. In addition, female researchers have the opportunity to apply for funding for assistant staff as well as travel and conference grants to improve their scientific work.

The submission round for the 2030 Professor Program runs until August 31, 2025. Universities must present an equality concept in order to receive funding and can actively exploit potential in their structures as part of this program. The second selection round convinced 56 universities, which can submit applications for start-up funding by September 30, 2026. Particularly outstanding concepts are awarded the title “Equal Opportunity University” and can apply for additional funding.

Financial support and program phases

A total of 320 million euros are available for the professor program over a period of eight years. The various program phases have a financial volume of 150 million euros for the first two phases (2008-2012 and 2013-2017), 200 million euros for the third phase (2018-2022) and the current 320 million euros for the current fourth phase (2023-2030). The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has commissioned the project management company DLR-PT to handle the funding measure.

In total, the professorship program has supported over 900 professorships to date and has been positively evaluated in all program phases to date. Although the proportion of women in professorships is stagnating, this initiative shows a strong commitment to creating better conditions for female scientists in Germany, which should strengthen equality in science in the long term. The contact persons for interested parties are Dr. Heike Scheidemann and Dr. Astrid Schüßler, who can provide competent advice on questions about project funding.