RWTH receives TOTAL E-QUALITY Award for Equal Opportunities and Diversity

For the fifth time since 2005, RWTH Aachen University receives the TOTAL E-QUALITY award. As one of 64 organizations, including 27 scientific institutions, it gets the award for its Human Resources and Organizational Policy, which is oriented towards equal opportunities and which appreciates and promotes talents and potentials of both sexes.

 

This year, for the first time RWTH Aachen receives the additional title for Diversity. Based on this, RWTH Aachen will be able to systematically anchor its diversity strategy and the implementation of appropriate measures: RWTH Aachen defines diversity as a cross-cutting topic and therefore as explicit management task for which the socalled "forumDIVERSITY", initiated and coordinated by IGaD in 2015, is established as steering committee. The implementation of a transparent complaints procedure for protection against discrimination recording to the General Equal Treatment Act (AGG) as well as the establishment of a complaints office, which is equally responsible for employees and students, was crucial for the application for the additional award. In doing so the university follows a recommendation of the Anti-Discrimination Bureau of the Federation, since the establishment of a complaints office for students is not legally binding.

RWTH Aachen University has successfully integrated its current gender equality concept, which includes the fields of cultural change, gender governance, gender monitoring, the university as a place of work, equal treatment and protection against discrimination, research and teaching as well as the new personnel development concept. These are conceptualized not only as separate fields of action, but also as cross-cutting tasks in the fields of employment policy, recruitment strategy, employment conditions, qualifications concept and internationalization. In this context it is also important to mention the Guidelines to equal opportunities, which were developed jointly with the University of Cologne in 2017 and are supposed to be signed by other universities and scientific institutions in the region.

TOTAL E-QUALITY, founded in 1996 at the suggestion of the European Commission, aims to promote women in management positions as well as compatibility of family and work life and opportunities-oriented personnel development.

The award will be conferred for the duration of three years. A new award will be conferred if progress and sustainable achievements in the field of equal opportunities can be proven in future applications.