FamilyFund

The Central Equal Opportunities Officer has set up the FamilyFund for female postdocs and postdoctoral researchers as well as female junior professors at HHU (excluding the Faculty of Medicine) as part of the Female Professors Program III. The funds serve to relieve the burden on female scientists at HHU who, in addition to research and teaching, also have child care (for children up to the age of 12 or school-age children with special support needs) and/or family care responsibilities and are thus exposed to multiple burdens.

The academic career path of young female scientists is delayed due to a heavier workload caused also by care work. The Central Equal Opportunities Officer takes this reality of most women as an opportunity to enable junior female scientists to "catch up" on their research. Women still take significantly more parental leave and spend more time nursing relatives than men. Even though parental leave at universities can in many cases lead to an extension of the contract of employment upon application, re-entering research after a long period of absence is a challenge that also has a long-term impact on one's own work and qualification profile. With parental leave and the still uneven burden of care work in total, the duration of women's qualification phase is extended. The FamilyFund aims to help early career female scientists make up for lost research time by granting them additional resources for their research.

These FamilyFund resources can be used to increase the hours of your own staff, for teaching assignments or SHK/WHK/WHB hours. Please note that teaching assignments are relevant to capacity and your own contractually defined teaching obligations remain unaffected. The fund is limited to a total of 15,000 euros per year and is processed and distributed among the applications. Applications are processed in the order in which they are received. Special consideration will be given to single parents. The amount of the individual grant, which is provided in the form of a budget shift, can be 1,500 euros. There is no legal entitlement to a grant.

If you are interested, please send an informal letter by e-mail, in which you briefly describe how you intend to use the grant, to the contact person below. You will then receive all further information as well as the application form.

Your contact person at the Equal Opportunities Office:
Helen Goslich
Office of the Central Equal Opportunities Officer
E-Mail:

Applications for funds for the individual funding of (young) female scientists can also be submitted further at:

funds for the individual funding of (young) female scientists