Women and work

The Bonn/Rhine-Sieg Women & Career Competence Center

The Bonn/Rhine-Sieg Women & Work Competence Center has been supporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the region for over 10 years, helping them to position themselves as attractive employers and secure skilled workers in the long term through a life-phase-oriented HR policy and family-friendly corporate culture. It is a cooperation project between the City of Bonn's Economic Development Department and the Rhein-Sieg district and is funded by the Ministry for Children, Youth, Family, Equality, Refugees and Integration of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. With a needs-based focus, the competence center will provide support in the core areas during the funding period, which runs until the end of 2027:

Recruitment,
career development and mentoring,
life-phase-oriented personnel policy and
Support for female entrepreneurship.

In workshops, lectures and mentoring programs, employees and entrepreneurs can gain inspiration and ideas for themselves, network with each other and support the future viability of their company by exchanging ideas with like-minded people.

Is there a need for the explicit "advancement of women"?

The black-green state government has anchored the continuation of the competence centers in the coalition agreement, thereby making it clear how important the topic of gender equality is in a socio-political context. After all, studies have shown for years that supporting women in economic life is highly relevant from a socio-political, demographic and economic perspective. In 2023, women in Germany earned an average of 18% less per hour than men. This is often due to their career path - frequently interrupted by "care work". On average, women in Germany are around 30 years old when their first child is born. From this age onwards, their average gross hourly earnings stagnate, whereas men's earnings tend to rise with increasing age. Over the course of their working lives, women interrupt their careers far more frequently than men and work part-time much more often; career advancements and pay rises are therefore rarer for women because they take on the majority of care work; on average, they perform 44.3% more unpaid care work than men in a private context. 34 percent of all working women are active in the care sector, but only 8 percent of men, so even here the ratio is a good four to one. Over 50 percent of women aged between 30 and 65 work part-time, but only just over 7 percent of working men. We therefore need to continue to pay attention to this issue - and provide targeted support for women, particularly in view of the fact that poverty in old age primarily affects women.

Project focus

Recruitment of female specialists and managers

In this project focus, the competence center is dedicated to the shortage of skilled workers and the enormous potential that women hold for the labor market. The Competence Center works closely with regional players in the labour market, including in the Alliance for Skilled Workers, acts as an information broker and highlights ways in which companies can better address, attract and retain women. Against the backdrop of demographic change, digitalization, decarbonization and deglobalization efforts, companies are facing more challenges than ever before, to which they need to respond quickly. In the next 15 years, for example, around 15.4 million workers will retire - this cannot be compensated for by the "new generation" of young people alone. Companies must increasingly abandon the idea of finding the "perfect fit" of skilled workers on the market "on time and on budget". It is important to react creatively and flexibly to the changes - and to develop your own potential skilled workers through targeted on-the-job training for employees, for example. Here, too, the Competence Center focuses on the untapped employment potential of women: In many cases, they are involuntarily working part-time. The Chief Economist of KfW, Dr. Fritzi Köhler-Geib, also states that the future depends to a large extent on how we shape the participation of women and older employees in the workforce, as well as immigration and needs-based job training. However, the issue of equality does not only affect women. Depending on their professional background, men are also not always able to participate in family and care work to the extent they would like.

Family-conscious or life-phase-oriented personnel policy

The compatibility of work and care work is one of the decisive arguments in the labor market for finding and retaining skilled workers in the long term. Small and medium-sized companies in particular often do not have their own HR department. The Competence Center for Women & Work supports SMEs in the region in making their culture more family-friendly and life-phase-oriented, communicating this to the outside world and thus making them competitive on the job market. In the "Netzwerk familienbewusste Unternehmen Bonn/Rhein-Sieg" - a network of around 80 companies - the Competence Center team uses lectures, workshops and seminars (digital or analogue) to connect companies with each other and provide them with relevant information on reconciling work and care work. After the admission process, member companies receive the "Member of the Bonn/Rhine-Sieg family-conscious companies network" award and are listed on the Competence Center's website with a link to their own website. The 34th meeting of the network took place in June, at which the focus was on developing topics and fields of action that could bring added value to the entire network for the current funding phase.

Career development and mentoring

Looking at the various occupational areas, an analysis of the 2022 census by the federal and state statistical offices shows that around 39% of women in Bonn hold management positions, compared to 61% of men. In the Rhein-Sieg district, the ratio is 30 to 70 percent.

The Competence Center would like to ensure that there are more women in management positions and, with its one-year, free cross-mentoring program "mentoring4women", is aimed at female specialists from SMEs who either aspire to a management position, want to consolidate their existing management role or develop into a specialist. The competence center provides the framework for the programme, organizes the events (kick-off/closing event and the mid-term meeting), acquires mentees and mentors and ensures a trusting exchange.

The aim is to support women in their personal development and to assist them with challenges in their professional advancement. "mentoring4women" has become a brand in the region. Supporters include the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg District Crafts Association and the Cologne Chamber of Crafts. The next program will start for the fifth time in November 2024.

Support for female entrepreneurship

The Bonn/Rhine-Sieg Women & Career Competence Center has also set itself the goal of supporting female entrepreneurship in the region. The number of "female start-ups" is rising steadily throughout Germany, and young women in particular are opting to set up their own businesses. Numerous offers here in the region encourage women to start up and offer support during the start-up phase. In the current funding phase, the Competence Center is involved in the Bonn/Rhine-Sieg network of female advisors and, for example, organizes the Female Founders' Day in September together with the other cooperation partners. History shows that around a third of founders end their self-employment within the first five years, whether for family reasons, illness or simply because the income levels in an employment relationship are considered to be higher. The risk of giving up a young company after the third year of existence is particularly high for women. This is where the competence center comes in and is launching a mentoring program for the first time in 2025, focusing on younger existing companies - in particular female entrepreneurs between the third and fifth year after their foundation. The aim of the program is to network and support female entrepreneurs with mentors who have successfully founded their own businesses.

Development of the competence center

The competence centers ensure - across all areas of life and work - a strong focus on women and their employment potential for the region. Even if many parties involved in the labour market have recognized these signs and developed offers specifically for women (AA, JC, HWK, IHK...), the focus of the competence center is on cooperating precisely here, passing on knowledge, pooling skills and multiplying years of experience for the benefit of all labour market players and making the need for action visible.

In the future, the competence centers in NRW want to cooperate even more closely and also address the target groups with joint digital offers - regardless of regional priorities. One example of this is the Digital Skilled Workers Week in February 2025. The pooling of expertise and greater reach will ensure a higher degree of effectiveness. Competentia Cologne and Bonn/Rhein-Sieg will launch a new edition of the "Female Recruiting" guide in fall 2024.

Achieving gender equality is a joint task. Sustainable change can only be achieved through the joint efforts of politics, society and companies. Equal participation of women in working life is essential if companies want to remain sustainable and competitive. The Women & Work competence centers make a decisive contribution to precisely this - they ensure "awareness" and the continuous sensitization of these topics.