Gender and Diversity in Political Science in Germany: Still Lagging Behind or Finally Catching Up?

In Germany there is a gross gender imbalance in academia – political science being no exception. Many women drop out over the course of a standard academic career in political science in the so-called ‘leaky pipeline’. Only about a quarter of political science professors are females. As for diversity, there is a lack of data, but anecdotal evidence illustrates that the situation is even more dramatic. The gender and diversity gap has been difficult to plug due to institutional peculiarities of the German academic system. Some of these difficulties come from the academic qualification system resulting in a very long and winding road to a professorship. In this paper I examine some of the trends and the causes. I argue that while we can clearly observe a trend of catching up in the last 20 years, international comparisons illustrate that Germany is still lagging behind – which has profound consequences on the discipline at large.