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Technical University of Munich
Technical University of Munich

Equal Opportunity

Welcome to this Web page of the Informatik-Forum Frauen (IFF, the forum of women in Informatics at TUM). IFF is an informal group of members of TUM Department of Informatics who are working towards equal participation of women and of other under-represented groups at the department.

The group conducts a monthly meeting, the IFF Jour fixe, where we talk about strategies and initiatives. Normally we meet every last Wednesday of the month from 12 to 1 pm in Room 01.05.058. The meeting is open to everybody who is interested in gender and diversity issues at TUM Department of Informatics. No registration is required; bring your own lunch. For the exact schedule, see here.

Our position on under-representation of women and other groups in computer science is cultural. We believe that under-representation is constructed through social mechanisms. Keywords are gender expectations and gender bias, stereotypes, token syndrom, glass ceiling and glass cliff. There is a lot of science to back this up! Some of it is summarized in the book "Whistling Vivaldi" by Claude M. Steele, who has written up a life of research in Sociology in a pertinent, easily accessible and entertaining book. The book can be borrowed from us at IFF. To give a taste of our position, you might also be interested in watching a one-hour gender training session at Google titled "Unconscious Bias @ Work", see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLjFTHTgEVU.

IFF has instigated a number of activities, particularly:

  • Monthly IFF Lunch Meeting for female members of TUM Department of Informatics (graduate and PhD students, faculty)
  • Workshop on work-life-study balance
  • Workshop with Google software engineers on women in computer science
  • Kinderzimmer with flexible childcare (a joint initiative of the departments of Mathematics and Informatics)
  • Liesel Beckmann Symposium "Mein Informatik-Puzzle" ("Puzzling out Informatics") 2013
  • Input to a departmental working group on a diversity target agreement between TUM Department of Informatics and TUM (Diversity-Zielvereinbarung)
  • IFF Travel Grants 2014 to 2018 to different seminars and conferences with topics related to gender and diversity in STEM fields
  • Gender statistics at TUM Department of Informatics, done by Christine Hogelucht.

IFF is a forum of collaboration with students, administration and faculty at TUM Department of Informatics, with TUM.Diversity and other faculties on Campus Garching, particularly with Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics.

IFF was founded by Anne Brüggemann-Klein, currently TUM Department of Informatics Gender Equality Officer. You may contact her or any of the TUM Department of Informatics Gender Equality Officers with any suggestions or concerns about gender and equality issues at frauenbeauftragte@in.tum.de.

View IFF current initiatives here -> Projects

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