195–213. equality diversity and inclusion at work
152 Equality, diversity and inclusion at work
Competence Center at Berlin’s Humboldt University. The Free University of Berlin has also established a course in gender competence. The Center
of Social Research in Dortmund has founded a Gender Academy. The University of Applied Sciences in Kiel of ers ‘custom-made programmes
of qualifying and training for the implementation of gender mainstream- ing’;
2
on completing the course, the students receive a ‘Gender Expert’ certii cate.
3
There are similar academic approaches in other countries. The Tyrolian University of Applied Sciences in Kufstein, for example,
of ers ‘gender competence training’. The University of Applied Sciences in Solothurn, Switzerland, of ers a gender management course. Not only
academic institutions, but also other organisations are trying not only to meet the demand for gender knowledge, but also to stimulate it: political
foundations and, interestingly, various counsulting i rms. The kind of gender knowledge that is taught varies from institution to institution. I
shall return to this point. With regard to the relationship between gender and profession, there is a further issue that reminds us of processes of
professionalisation in other i elds. With the growing professionalisation of gender politics, the i eld becomes attractive to men. This is similar to
the professionalisation of social work, for example.
4
Professionalisation changes the gender relation in favour of men even in the i eld of gender
politics, which until now has been occupied almost exclusively by women.
GENDER COMPETENCE
The new leading concept in gender politics is ‘gender competence’. The term itself is generally accepted. But what gender competence means, what
it consists of, is an issue that is widely contested. Within this struggle, the women’s movement and female politicians engaged in women’s politics
are only two stakeholders among several competing groups of actors. The dei nitions of gender competence oscillate between two poles: political and
economic. At one extreme, gender competence is dei ned in the tradition of political feminism, that is, i nding ways and means for eliminating the per-
sisting inequalities between women and men. At the other, it is character- ised by a dominance of economic arguments and reasons; the dif erences
between women and men are not so much described in terms of social inequality, as understood as a resource of organisational development.
To outline the political dei nition I refer to the paper by Sigrid Metz-Göckel and Christine Rolof 2002: 8, ‘Gender competence as a key
qualii cation’. Based on a dei nition of gender as a structural category in social analysis, gender competence is understood as the ‘knowledge neces-
sary to recognise social determinations in the behaviour and the attitudes