Women in technical jobs – this is still something talked about as if it was something pretty special, and a relatively rare occurrence. In the Kapsch Group, women have always been “one step ahead”, and many of them are working in management posts. But of course, there is scope for even more women to discover their love of technical jobs and to join a Kaspch Group company. That was the starting-point for a project reported here by our colleague Alexander Pokorny, who played a key part in it – and who’s male.

“Having been with the Legal Department at Kapsch BusinessCom AG since June 2007, at the end of 2007 I had the chance to get a certificate via the "Small General Management Curriculum" route at Kapsch University. This programme includes not just six very diverse training modules, in terms of their themes, but also project work undertaken by several participants together. Our team – comprising Julia Doyle, Andreas Haider, Eric Hallwachs, Michaela Harrich, Sabine Reininger and me – came together quickly; a colourful mix of employees from different Kapsch Group companies.

Soon we had also reached agreement on the focus of our project: a pocket calendar for the “More women in Kapsch!” initiative. The aim was that the calendar should communicate the wide range of possibilities for career and personal development offered at Kapsch Group for women, to a suitably sympathetic target group - women students. The core of the “Kapsch Women’s Calendar” is a presentation of statements by women working in Kapsch Group companies about how they see themselves and their career.

In total 15,000 calendars were distributed at the following universities: Johannes Kepler Universität Linz, Technische Universität Vienna, Fachhochschule Technikum Vienna, Wirtschaftsuniversität Vienna, Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt and Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. Apart from the highly positive experience of working with this group of people, I wouldn’t have missed out on the experience of designing and carrying out this project work for anything. And we are delighted to now confirm that the number of women applying to Kapsch is steadily increasing.”