Women in leadership – conference as concluding highlight of Jacobs University’s “Gender Awareness Week”

On March 17, 2007, Jacobs University hosted its first “Women in leadership” conference. Three renowned speakers first toured the campus accompanied by Jacobs University students and afterwards gave talks on their experiences as women in leading positions. More than 60 participants attended the talks and the panel discussion, which inspired lively and productive debates amongst the audience and the guest speakers. The awarding ceremony of the “ZONTA Women in Leadership” arts contest and the performance of scenes of “Vagina Monologues” rounded the program.

[ Mar 19, 2007]  Not many people realize that even today only a tenth of all leading positions in Germany are held by women; even less women are entrepreneurs. Also in higher education there are only 15 % women who hold professorships. Therefore it is all the more important for female students, who are at the early stages of their career, to benefit from experiences of such women, who were able to establish themselves successfully in leaderships: What is the secret recipe to become a successful female leader? Are females perhaps not game enough to assume responsibility for leadership?

The conference guest speakers like the publicist Annette Eicker, founder of the publishing house matchboxmedia and former editor in chief at the magazine Karriere, as well as Judith Jungmann, director human resources at Danone GmbH and former human resource strategist at Siemens AG and Prof. Dr. Margit Schreier, professor of Empirical Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Jacobs University, looked into these and other aspects and informed about gender roles and awareness in business. Regrettably, Heide Simonis, current President of UNICEF Germany and former prime minister of Schleswig-Holstein, had to call off her attendance because of illness.

Beside the performance of scenes of “Vagina Monologues” by Eve Elsner in a production of Jacob University students, a further highlight of the conference program was the award ceremony of the “ZONTA Women in Leadership”-contest. Two artists share the first prize: Konstantin Mihov with Eleven Minutes 2007 (Natural essential oils and absolutes) and Irena Tremcinska with Virgin Mary/Virgin of Orleans 2007 (Stained Clay) were comparably impressive. Cornelia Lohmann's piece "Mütter" (Mothers) received an honorary mention as well as the audience award..

The films of the three presentations can be viewed in the near future by going to: www.iu-bremen.de/womeninleadership.