Record number of female managers in SMEs as World Women's Day nears

"Gender balance" is also an issue among start-ups and in 2021, 42 per cent of all start-ups were founded by women compared to a mere 38 per cent in 2020, according to KfW Start-up Monitor. To boost this development, Hamburg established the Female Founders scheme in August featuring a free online course to help women found and scale up their companies. The Hamburg-based Traceless, set up by Dr Anne Lamp and Johanna Baare, is also scaling up. The two founders have come up with a sustainable, award-winning alternative to conventional plastics and scooped the German Founders' Prize 2022 in the Start Up category. The bio-economy start-up is a spin-off from the Hamburg Technical University (TU) where Professor Irina Smirnova is responsible for the strategic development of this particular field of research. In 2020, she became the first woman in TU's history to be elected Vice President of Research. Meanwhile, Professor Ute Lohrentz will take up office as the new president of HAW Hamburg university in May. This comes after the university's senate unanimously elected the former dean of the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences last December.

Madeleine Marx, Managing Director of the The Westin Hamburg, has been at the helm for four years. Opened in 2016, the 21-storey hotel in in the Elbphilharmonie building is part of the Marriott International Group, which had the world's highest hotel industry turnover prior to the pandemic. Tourism figures for 2022 show a rapid recovery in Hamburg's tourist industy. The hotel is expecting higher guest numbers this year as Hamburg prepares to host German Unity Day on October 3 with the main ceremony in the Elbphilharmonie. The hotel industry is dominated by women who accounted for a share of 61.8 per cent, according to the Dehoga Zahlenspiegel 2021.  

However, women tend to be underrepresented in theatre, according to a 2021 survey of 4,000 employees and 11,500 artists in 650 performances in 22 European countries. By contrast, the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg has been managed by Karin Beier since the 2013-14 season. In 2017, the directing artistic director was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class for her outstanding work there. Other concepts such as that behind the Opernloft at the Old Ferry Terminal in Altona are also enjoying growing popularity. Managed by Yvonne Bernbom, Inken Rahardt and Susann Oberacker, the trio hope to make opera more accessible to newcomers by staging 90-minute operas, an opera slam called the "Singer's War" or crime operas to lower inhibition thresholds. Once inside, guests can then enjoy fantastic views of the Elbe River and opera.

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