Only one in six professors in Germany is a woman. But Germany's Education Ministry is trying to redress the huge gender imbalance. It is giving 79 universities extra funding to employ more female lecturers and professors.

 There are plenty of women in Germany pursuing a Ph.D. Statistics show, though, that advancing any further is extremely difficult. Chancellor Angela Merkel may be running the country but for many other women in Germany the glass ceiling is firmly in place -- with one of the biggest gender pay gaps in the European Union and a glaring absence of women in top management positions. So it comes as no surprise that women also find it difficult to forge ahead in the male-dominated world of German academia.

While women make up 50 percent of the student body, they only account for 40 percent of those pursuing doctorates. Once you start going up the stairs in the ivory tower the presence of women becomes even rarer. Only 24 percent of university lecturers are women and a paltry 15 percent of the country's 38,000 tenured professors are female.

The German Education Ministry is hoping to make a dent in those figures, by paying the salary of between one and three female professors or lecturers at universities who prove a commitment to redressing this gender imbalance. On Wednesday Education Minister Annette Schavan, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, revealed the results of the first round of a competition for getting these extra funds.