The Cluster of Excellence “BlueMat – Water-Driven Materials” has reached an important milestone at TU Hamburg: exactly half of the 28 BlueMat positions at TUHH are now filled by women. This underscores TU Hamburg's strong commitment to equality and diversity in science and research. Across all project partners within the cluster, BlueMat currently achieves a similarly high proportion of 43 percent women.
A key factor in this success was targeted measures implemented by BlueMat in collaboration with the Women’s Career Index (FKi). For example, special attention was paid to gender-equitable wording in job advertisements, and requirements as well as career opportunities were communicated clearly and invitingly, explains Franziska Lissel, Diversity Director at BlueMat.
Flexible working hour models and a family-friendly work environment – supported by TUHH’s own services such as the Family Office, a parent-child workspace, and the borrowing of toys at the university library – greatly facilitate the compatibility of career and family and create a workplace where science and private life can complement each other optimally.
“We actively promote the compatibility of cutting-edge research and family life by enabling flexible working hours and encouraging parents to bring their children to important appointments. This way, we especially want to provide the best possible support for women in the scientific community,” says Franziska Lissel. A particularly impressive example was the BlueMat presentation before the DFG in Bonn in January 2025, where two children traveled along – including Lissel’s then breastfed son and the child of another team member, vividly demonstrating the lived family-friendliness.
Looking ahead, BlueMat aims to maintain at least the already achieved high proportion of women and, if possible, increase it further. To this end, a systematic indexing is planned together with the FKi, which will initially provide an inventory of all measures and later evaluate their effectiveness. This way, BlueMat wants to continuously ensure that equality is not just lip service but actively practiced.
