We took International Women's Day on 8 March as an opportunity to look behind the scenes: How are our female colleagues at Deutsche Windtechnik who work in technical areas doing? Two service technicians, a team leader from Distribution and two colleagues from IT gave us insights into their day-to-day work. One thing is for sure: They are all contributing to making it easier for coming generations of women to get into these exciting professions.

Service technicians Annika and Lea-Marie

"When I was in school, I never thought my future profession would have anything to do with electricity. I was thinking more about sports and social work," said Annika, who has been working as a service technician at Deutsche Windtechnik for three years. For this reason, she embarked on a voluntary social year after she finished school. But then something unexpected happened. She was asked to assist an in-house technician with his work and found that she had a talent for this type of work and also enjoyed it. "I provided meaningful help, and it was also fun," Annika said. "I had discovered my interest in technical work, so I decided to begin an apprenticeship as an electrical technician." That was in 2018.

Then a friend happened to tell her about his job as an offshore service technician after her apprenticeship, it sounded very exciting. Being able to make a small contribution to the energy transition through her work was the icing on the cake, so she decided to learn more and apply for a job.

She joined Deutsche Windtechnik in 2022: "Here I was able to learn everything that qualified me specifically to work on wind energy technology." At the time, Annika was one of the first women to choose wind turbine maintenance as a career. Today, there are twelve women among 873 male colleagues: five female service technicians and seven female mechatronics trainees.

"During the two decades that Deutsche Windtechnik has existed, several women have been involved in service technology and rope access technology. We are very pleased that we are now seeing a slight but increasing growth, even though it would be even better for our company if we had more," said Matthias Brandt, Director of Deutsche Windtechnik.

What distinguishes a female service technician from her male colleagues?

What is it like to work as a service technician? Are there any gender-specific particularities? We asked Annika: "As a female service technician, I'm required to do the same work as my male colleagues, and I think that's a good thing. We respect and treat each other as equals and work together very well. I was part of a permanent team with a male colleague during the first few years. At the moment I'm a stand-in, which also works well. I've never been part of a service team that included another woman. But that's not absolutely necessary."

We wanted to know more: Aren't there at least subtle differences? Annika: "Sometimes we divide the work in a way that makes sense. I'm rather short, so I can climb into tight spaces quite well, for example into the hub. If large men are part of the team, they tend to carry more than I do when we're not using the crane or hoists. But of course, there are also shorter men and taller women, so you can't generalise."

Lea-Marie, who has been working as a service technician at Deutsche Windtechnik since last year, agrees: "The work is generally divided up well: We prepare the tools, spare parts and aids in the Sprinter and then lift them up using the crane. We don't break our backs."

Then Annika remembers another difference: "In my experience, women can be more sensitive to weather conditions." In winter, it can be very cold at heights. On the other hand, the heat in summer is not a problem for her personally, but perhaps it is more so for some men?

Lea-Marie can confirm this: "In winter, I have to dress warmly and wear thermal underwear. It's an advantage that the clothes can often be too large for us women, which allows us to wear several layers. I've also had to wear three pairs of socks because of the cold."

There are no special sanitary facilities at the wind farm; some wind farms have mobile toilets. "But that's not a problem," they both said.

And what about snide remarks?

"I've never had to put up with unkind remarks at Deutsche Windtechnik just because I'm a woman," Annika said. "But it was definitely an issue during my apprenticeship as an electrical technician. It was very important that the managing directors there supported me. It was tough at times."

And Lea-Marie had the same experience. She even had to switch to a different car repair shop to do her apprenticeship as an automotive mechatronics technician because of prejudice against women. As a woman, she was often only given simple tasks. "At Deutsche Windtechnik, on the other hand, I feel that they have confidence in me. I can always ask a question and always call if I need to. It's like a big family. I experienced that again yesterday at our larger team day. We sat together, sixteen people, two women, and ate together. Everyone chatted with everyone else. It was cool!"

Being a female manager in a male-dominated environment

Change of scene: Judith is sitting in the office early in the morning wearing a headset, fully absorbed in several error messages. Around her are only men.

Judith is the Team Lead Field Operations, Area West. Her task is to coordinate the 96 male and one female service technicians in their area of operation. 1,200 turbines require regular maintenance. In addition, short-term fault elimination and repair deployments require more intensive communication between the service teams and technology and material supply. Discussions with employees are also part of Judith's responsibilities as a manager.

"I had a lot to prove here in the beginning. I had just switched to this professional field, I was young, and I was a woman." Today, she laughs about it: "Everyone respects me now. I have gathered a lot of technical expertise and can deal with everyone quite well."

This is a sign of great talent for empathetic communication, which is generally recognised as women's strength. Judith also puts a lot of work into it: "Because personal contact is so important to me, I often visited my service technicians in Viöl during their safety training in the beginning. We use Microsoft Teams a lot in our daily work, and I also go out into the field to have personal conversations."

And when unpleasant things or criticism need to be addressed, is that more difficult with men? "I remember that I didn't want to come across as touchy in the beginning. But I grew into it, and then I became more relaxed at some point. I realised that the discussion I was apprehensive about initially turned out to be fine!"

She was also helped by a coaching programme for managers offered by Deutsche Windtechnik. "Sometimes you must have a thick skin, and occasionally you have to say 'stop'. But I've settled in very well now."

Despite all this, Judith would be delighted to have more women on the team. "Many women don't even know what you do in scheduling. There are good opportunities for personal development here. But the wind industry in general also has tremendous potential – especially for women." 

The high proportion of women in IT is a trailblazing trend

Nadja and Hilal are also convinced of this. Both work as IT programmers at Deutsche Windtechnik, albeit in entirely different areas.

Over the past few years, Nadja has worked in Control Technology to significantly improve the software for the ADLS (Aircraft Detection Light System). Her programming work enables the data from the individual ADLS locations to be sent to a large server that monitors and evaluates the data to calculate availability, for example.

Hilal, on the other hand, is part of the Collaborative Work team, which operates within the IT department at Deutsche Windtechnik AG. She programmes automated workflows for applications in Microsoft Teams and Sharepoint that facilitate document storage or approval processes, for example.

While this is Hilal's first permanent employment, Nadja had already worked in site assessment for ten years before she joined Deutsche Windtechnik. "I was already working with software and tools to automatically analyse climate and weather data while studying environmental sciences. Now, at Deutsche Windtechnik, I only programme software. I don't have an affinity for hardware at all. At first, I thought that made me slightly different from the men who grew up with software and hardware. But that's not the case at all. Everyone is happy to have software developers who enjoy programming and are able to do it."

And what skills does it take to program software?

"Logical thinking, the ability to think abstractly and, very importantly, a high willingness to learn. For example, I'm still learning a new programming language," said Nadja, who is also the mother of a 16-year-old son in her personal life. "And when there are setbacks, curiosity and openness help us to look ahead again." She is the only woman on her software development team, which she recently transferred to within the company.

It's a very different story for Hilal: More than thirty per cent (7 out of 23) in the IT department are women, with most of them working in IT project management. Hilal: "I think it has a lot to do with upbringing, the role models you grew up with. I felt different at school for a long time because I was a bit more nerdy and had an interest in gaming and anime."

"But that has changed: Today it's cool and everyone talks about anime. I practically watched the change happen first-hand. It was fun to watch. I would like programming to be taught at every school from an early age. It's really important to arouse interest early on. I am certain many women have a great talent for this and don't even realise it."

Are you interested in a technical career in wind energy? Check out our Carrer page or send us an unsolicited application! We welcome all applications, regardless of gender, nationality, ethnic and social origin, religion, worldview, disability, age, sexual orientation, and identity.