657–74. equality diversity and inclusion at work

‘Gender competence’: Germany 151 managing diversity. Gender mainstreaming is a concept that is open to dif erent interpretations. According to the widely quoted dei nition of the Council of Europe, gender mainstreaming is ‘the reorganisation, improvement, development and evaluation of policy processes, so that a gender equality perspective is incorporated in all policies at all levels and at all stages, by the actors normally involved in policy-making’ Council of Europe 1998: 15. According to this dei nition, gender mainstreaming is understood as a cross-sectional task. It has i a personnel dimension – all members of an organisation are involved, ii a thematic dimension – all programmes and decisions have to be checked with respect to gender equality, and iii a formal dimension – all levels of an organisation’s hierarchy are involved. The complexity of the area of responsibility and the inclusion of poten- tially all members of an organisation account for why gender politics tends to become professionalised under the auspices of gender mainstreaming. There is a growing demand for gender competence on the side of the organisations, so that it is economically worthwhile to develop and to of er a specii c gender expertise. The responsible actors within the organisations – and these are not only the women’s representatives – are usually not equipped with the knowledge that is necessary to start gender mainstream- ing processes ef ectively. This circumstance and the political pressure to implement gender mainstreaming have led to a growing demand for gender expertise Bock et al. 2004: 248; Schambach and von Bargen 2004: 283. GENDER EXPERTISE Gender mainstreaming and managing diversity have created a new market, and those who of er their services on this market try to professionalise their expertise. A new professional proi le is emerging: the gender expert. The shape and the course of this process are well known from research in other i elds of professionalised work, where we can observe the i rst steps of an academic approach to knowledge transfer as well as initiatives to found a professional association. In 2004, a professional association for gender training and gender counselling was founded in Germany. Established professional associations of education and counselling are aiming to inte- grate the gender issue into their professional activities, for example the German Association for Supervision or the German Association of Adult Education. The Professional Association of German Sociologists has also taken up the gender issue. 1 Various institutions are involved in the academic approach to knowl- edge transfer. The most prominent German institution is the Gender