Equal Opportunity

Our policy

Image: © Amac Garbe

ct.qmat is highly committed to equal opportunity and diversity, striving for inclusive excellence by promoting a research and teaching environment that supports careers regardless of gender, gender identity, sexual identity, ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability or health condition, or age.

ct.qmat’s basic principles of equality are laid down in the Joint Würzburg-Dresden gender equality and diversity commitment which was worked out on the basis of the policies and procedures followed by the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Technische Universität Dresden, and on the DFG’s appropriate recommendations. The both universities’ plans of action we draw on – JMU’s gender equality plan (2015 – 2020) and TUD’s diversity strategy 2030, including an updated equal opportunity concept 2014 – were geared towards attracting, recruiting and developing the best talents for the advancement of their strategic research areas.

Our equality measures

In line with its founding universities, the Cluster of Excellence works towards gender equality using a comprehensive, continuously extended set of measures in order to encourage females to pursue an academic career.

However, we are also aware of the fact that it requires a broad spectrum of sustainable measures to spark the interest in physics among younger school students first and to attract prospective students in particular girls to studying physics. Once recruited to physics studies, the next important issue is to keep young women motivated to stick to a physics career path. Which is why our package of measures ranges from those aimed at

- - attracting more girls to physics
  - fostering career development of women in academia
  - facilitating the return to work from parental leave
  - creating family friendly conditions for an academic career,
  - and finally to raising awareness of unconscious bias.

For facilitating the return to work from parental leave, the Cluster of Excellence launched the structured contact keeping and re-entry program keep in touch.