"That's why we must always make it very clear to ourselves that it's not about individual people or men in particular who are doing something wrong ... Stereotypes, role clichés, ... we all have that in us." (Marsden 2021)

A sustainable foundation for parity in every respect can only be built through social reflection and reorientation. Digital processes also merely reflect social culture in both a positive and negative sense.

Digitalisation could be a good opportunity to question stereotypes and build a gender-equitable culture (see Digital Gender Gap).

Structural measures for women and men also seem to have a catch. (...). As an employer, we must therefore take a close look so that we do not achieve the opposite of what we want to achieve." (Menzel-Riedl 2020)

Equality measures must be planned in a targeted manner. This is pointed out, for example, by a US study in which parents with children were given the opportunity to extend their tenure track professorship. The proportion of women among parents who successfully completed their evaluation fell by 22%, while it increased among men (Antecol et al. 2018).

"The development of the figures shows that the core issue must be a cultural change that is supported by structural change, including the corresponding procedural changes both at the individual institutions and in the system as a whole." (German Rectors' Conference 2022)

Without claiming to be exhaustive, we would like to present what we consider to be some important starting points for Gender equality 4.0 based on the latest publications by the Leopoldina, the German Council of Science and Humanities, the DFG, the German Rectors' Conference, the German Women's Council and the German government's third Gender Equality Report: