Equal Opportunity

The goal of this focus area is to build inclusive and safe spaces, particularly for women, trans, non-binary, and people experiencing intersectional discrimination within the category of gender. To this end, we are implementing two measures. Firstly, we changed about half of the restrooms in the institute to non-gendered restroom spaces. This structural change of the building directly impacts trans, non-binary, and inter-sectional gendered groups by giving the access of each of the employees a bathroom that they will feel comfortable using within a very short walking distance on the same floor. We note that this change does not address the intersectionality of people with disabilities who require a wheelchair-accessible bathroom. Though we do have two such restrooms, we don't have the capacity to make more of our restrooms suitable for people who need such a restroom due to architectural constraints.
The second measure concerns establishing a regular lunch meeting for underrepresented individuals at the institute. The title "FLINTAQ*" is a German acronym that stands for "Women, Homosexuals, Intersex, Non-binary, Trans, Agender, Queer, etc." The choice of this name is used to help educate the larger MPI MiS community about this acronym used in communities across Germany to address the intersectionality of gender and sexual orientation. Though the terminology is not perfect, it is currently used in communities around Leipzig. When anyone asks, they are, of course, welcome to join the lunch; we simply ask that those who are not typically underrepresented in mathematics take this lunch as an opportunity to mainly listen without judgment, creating a safe space for those who identify as underrepresented. Invitations to this lunch are sent out via email to all who are currently affiliated with the MPI and to all guests.
In addition, we regularly advertise the Max Planck Society seminars and training and occasionally organize such events ourselves. For details, please check the Intranet (MAXnet) page of the Equal Opportunities Office.

An important aspect of increasing the attractiveness of our institute as an employer is providing our employees with good conditions for being able to take care of a family. Since the incompatibility of work and family life is a reason especially for women to end their career in academics, this can increase the number of female applicants. More generally, measures in this area benefit all employees who have or plan to have a family.

We support this principle with three measures.

• In order to address the fact that having dual-career couples disproportionately affects women in mathematics, our MPI is a member of the Dual Career Networtk Mitteldeutschland (DCNM). The Dual Career Network Mitteldeutschland aims to help dual career couples integrate vocationally, ensuring inclusive and family-friendly staff development. Within the network, various institutions of higher education, research and business work together to provide targeted assistance to dual career couples. Additionally, whenever possible, we proactively try to find dual career solutions within our institute or in cooperation with Leipzig University. This has been quite successful and played an important role in attracting several of our outstanding female scientists.
• We are glad to offer our employees with small children a special service: since May/August 2010 there are two day care centers in close proximity to the institute, in the Seeburgstrasse 62 and Talstrasse 18 for up to ten children under the age of three. These facilities offer special opening hours appropriate to the requirements of researchers and Max Planck employees take precendence over other applicants. More information is available on the respective intranet (MAXnet) page.
• On this intranet page, we also provide information about our parent-child office, which offers all of its members a flexible option to improve the compatibility of family and career and provide a good work-life balance.

We strive to showcase female scientist that can serve as role models in mathematics. In addition to our efforts to ensure a good representation of female scientists in our conference, workshops, and seminars, we also revitalized the Ladyzhenskaya Lecture series. Commemorating Olga Ladyzhenskaya’s contributions to mathematical physics and partial differential equations, the lecture series was initially organized in cooperation with Leipzig University from 2008 to 2014. The concept of this lecture series is to bring renowned female mathematicians in contact with the next generation of scientists. The latest Ladyzhenskaya Lectures were given by Mimi Dai (2022) and Svitalana Mayboroda (2023) We believe that such role models can have a lasting impact on the career choices of young women.

We regularly organize outreach activities for the general public in which we also showcase our female scientists, as well as the diversity of our scientists in other aspects. These events will be announced on our webpage.

Of course, improving working conditions for female scientists is not a task for the MPI alone. The EWM, for instance, is a network of female mathematicians, who decided to engage voluntarily in this association in order to improve the situation of women in mathematics. Our institute is an institutional member of this association.