Networking for the future

In many medical professions and the pharmaceutical industry, the proportion of women already corresponds to the percentage of women in the general population. "In the pharmaceutical research and development departments at Merck, over 50 percent of the employees are women," says Jennifer O'Lear, the company's Chief Diversity Officer. "At Merck, 22 percent of our managers today are women. We plan to raise that figure to between 25 and 30 percent by 2016. In the U.S. the proportion of women managers is already over 30 percent, whereas in Germany it's only 17 percent."

Women are still significantly underrepresented in top management positions. In 2010 women occupied only 3.2 percent of the senior management positions (including management boards) in the top 200 German companies by sales, excluding the banking and finance sector. In the companies included in the DAX® 30 stock market index, that figure was only 2.2 percent. On the supervisory boards of the largest companies, the proportion of women was just over 10 percent.

On the whole, German universities do not adequately prepare their students to take on management tasks and exercise leadership skills. Women and men have different ways of working, and today the working environment is still oriented much more toward the strengths typically shown by men. Social scientists call this "homosocial reproduction" — the tendency to seek out the company of people similar to oneself. Specifically, people tend to choose co-workers they are familiar with because they share the same background and experience.

"Many years ago I saw an exhibition in Cologne about male bonding," recalls Kathrin Schönborn-Sobolewski, Head of Global Clinical Trial Management Full Development at the Merck Serono division in Darmstadt, Germany. Says Schönborn-Sobolewski, who supervises 200 employees all over the world, "It was absolutely astonishing to see how many networks men have created for themselves in order to share ideas and support one another. College fraternities, associations, lodges, Rotary clubs, and the list goes on and on!"

On the basis of her many years of experience, Schönborn-Sobolewski, who has a doctorate in pharmacology, knows that cooperation and sharing experiences by means of networking can be crucial success factors. In this way, people learn from one another, find out the latest news, and improve their self-assessment skills. A professional forum for women in the life sciences sector can help them gain these benefits.

To make this possible, the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA) was founded in the United States in 1977 and has grown since then to include more than 6,000 members. Because it is a solution-oriented, pragmatic network for learning and increasing management skills in particular, the HBA became popular quickly. "Nobody would want the organization to be simply a place where people can gripe and complain," says Schönborn-Sobolewski. "It's meant to be a productive place that helps us move forward."

Eight years ago the HBA expanded to Europe, and soon regional groups were established in cities including Milan, Paris, Basel, and London. "Soon after that I said to myself, I shouldn't have to travel across Europe in order to benefit from the network. It should also be possible to have meetings in the Rhine-Main region," she adds. Eventually it did become possible. Under her leadership, an HBA group consisting of women from various companies in and around Frankfurt is now active on a regular basis.

"Before that, my female supervisor from the U.S. had inspired me. She was a fantastic and successful manager with whom I worked together from 2002 to 2004, and she was very active in the HBA. She's still a role model for me," Schönborn-Sobolewski says.

The work of the HBA includes meetings on specific practical topics such as "Conducting Negotiations Successfully" and "Resilience" (the ability to not let even difficult challenges get you down). Another focus is personal mentoring for up-and-coming talents as well as experienced colleagues.