The expert provided an overview of key challenges and practical solutions relating to equality, career development, and fair distribution of work. This was followed by a lively discussion with questions from participating AIT colleagues.
The “gender career gap,” i.e., the unequal opportunities for men and women when it comes to career development, is a fact. Women find it much more difficult to advance their careers and attain leadership positions. In scientific careers, we refer to this as the “leaky pipeline.” This means that although women are ahead in terms of academic degrees, they are still underrepresented in leadership positions. The reasons for this lie in the unequal distribution of care responsibilities, but also in organizational and structural conditions.
What companies and employees can do
Alyssa Schneebaum highlighted the structural measures organizations can put in place to support employees in their professional development and mental and physical health. At the same time, she emphasized how important it is to actively take care of oneself—for example, by setting clear priorities, establishing boundaries, or requesting support.
One focus was on how to better balance paid work with private responsibilities (unpaid work), such as childcare, housework, or caring for relatives. Schneebaum presented various approaches to preventing excessive demands and making the distribution of paid and unpaid work fairer. These include realistic workloads, conscious delegation, and partnership in the private sphere.
Practical measures to combat the gender career gap
Finally, we looked at specific measures to counteract career development differences between the sexes, but also at raising awareness when life circumstances change—when women become mothers. Measures that can help remedy this situation include transparency and a “care-inclusive workplace design,” which means, for example, not scheduling meetings after 4 p.m. Helpful tip: Calendar entries create clarity and make it easy to talk to your team and supervisors. Different working models such as job sharing or co-leadership also offer good opportunities to counteract the gender career gap.
We would like to thank all participants for the lively exchange and look forward to the next sessions in the Equality Break series! The next Equality Break will take place on March 5, 2026.
About Alyssa Schneebaum
Alyssa Schneebaum, Ph.D. is Käthe-Leichter-guest-professor at the University of Vienna, before she was professor at the Vienna University of Economy. Her research focuses mainly on labor economics, applied microeconometrics, and the economics of gender, families and inequality. Alyssa Schneebaum was a recipient of the FWF Austrian Science Fund’s Hertha Firnberg grant from 2014 to 2018. She was presented with the Kurt Rothschild Award in 2016, received the WU’s Innovative Teaching award in 2017, and won the Käthe Leichter Award in 2018.