Female applicants are very welcome at Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. They can join the company's FORWARD network.

As a woman working in a mainly male team, Ina Wietheger has always found she can hold her own. In fact, this has never been a problem for the management consultant, and she has already made it as far as Principal at Roland Berger. "For me, operating within a mixed team environment is actually more fun," she says.

In her experience, women playing the leading role in an assignment send out the right signals to the client. "On the one hand, we find ourselves dealing with more and more women in the top management of client companies and, on the other, having a high proportion of female consultants demonstrates a modern corporate culture," says Ina Wietheger.

There is no doubt, however, that women are still far from achieving parity in the major business consultancies. In fact, only one in five management consultants is female. And that is certainly not down to a lack of high-quality applicants. For years now, women have been doing better than men at university, with female graduates getting most of the top grades.

Roland Berger is taking action to tackle this discrepancy. An initiative designed to help new female consultants get started on their careers was launched back in 2003. FORWARD (For Women: Attracting, Retaining, Developing) ensures a supportive approach from the very first career contact. In our presentations at universities and in job interviews, we make sure that female applicants get to meet women consultants, too. "Such talks are crucial for us to convey a realistic picture of our work to the new female potentials," explains Project Manager Ute Lysk.

After a candidate has made her career choice for Roland Berger, FORWARD again helps by offering the support of a coach during her traineeship. An experienced female consultant who is not the trainee's direct superior is always at hand over the first year for guidance and confidential advice. "The key thing for us is to provide new female colleagues with a supportive network," says Ute Lysk, who has done several stints of coaching herself.

One of the big reservations women have about a career in management consultancy is the difficulty of reconciling work and family commitments. Yet, as the experience of Project Manager Friederike Woermann-Seiger confirms, they should not be put off by first impressions. After Friederike had had her first child, she went back to consultancy on a part-time basis and was delighted by the flexibility available at Roland Berger. "The way my colleagues arranged my schedules was just perfect. I spent two and half days in Paris and could devote the rest of the week to the family."

For further information, visit the careers section   on our website.

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