The University's Equal Opportunities Office celebrated the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day with two well-attended events - a ceremony and a panel discussion.

Keynote speech by Jutta Limbach "Gender equality in programme and reality"

On the eve of 8 March, Prof. Dr Dr h.c. Jutta Limbach gave a keynote speech on the topic of "Gender equality in programme and reality". At the invitation of the Central Gender Equality Officer Anne G. Kosfeld, the former President of the Federal Constitutional Court and the Goethe Institute took stock of the Federal Republic's legal achievements on the road to equality - and showed what steps still need to be taken to get closer to this goal in everyday social life. While civil laws have been reformed since the 1970s to achieve equality between the sexes, "the tenacious myth of a division of labour based on creation" persists, said Limbach. Despite the recent introduction of "paternity leave", the full employment of women in Germany is still nowhere near as natural as in France, for example. At universities, too, such structural obstacles often work to the disadvantage of young female academics.

Karin Lochte: "Women and the sea - how a 'male profession' is changing"

The lecture by Prof Dr Karin Lochte, Director of the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven, impressively demonstrated that role models can be fundamentally changed. Under the title "Women and the sea - how a 'male profession' is changing", she used vivid examples from the world of polar and marine research to demonstrate the positive effects of technical innovations and a gender-sensitive working environment. Since she herself was one of the first women to take part in a research cruise in 1977 and first became a cruise leader in 1995, the proportion of women has risen to around 30% today, said Lochte. Mixed teams are now also a matter of course at polar research stations. In order to attract more women to leadership positions, the Chair of the DFG Commission of the Senate for Oceanography is committed to the consistent promotion of young researchers.

Panel discussion "Opportunities. Equality. Future. An assessment of the situation"

Working conditions in science were also the subject of the panel discussion moderated by Anne G. Kosfeld under the motto "Opportunities. Equality. Future" with representatives from university management, administration and research/teaching at the University of Oldenburg on 8 March. Since its founding phase in the early 1970s - with an initially all-male decision-making body - the university has made enormous progress, not least thanks to the joint commitment of women in administration and academia and the subsequent institutionalisation of gender equality work. However, the targeted promotion of women based on empirical data on existing underrepresentation is still necessary. Furthermore, the acceptance of different living conditions is one of the greatest challenges overall. Equal opportunities concern everyone, was the unanimous opinion of the panellists - who would also like to expand World Women's Day to include the perspectives of interested men in the future.