Research

Since neither male nor female experience alone can deliver a comprehensive picture of social reality, the Essen College of Gender Research (EKfG) focuses on the gender relationship and analyses differences and similarities with regard to biological sex and socially constructed gender. The College’s intersectional approach understands sex and gender to be intertwined and to interact with other characteristics that distinguish human beings from one another, such as socioeconomic circumstances, ethnic origin, educational background, social class or status, or age.

Collaboration between 51 members from seven different faculties, including Medicine, shapes the interdisciplinary research of the College. The research expertise of the EKfG members is concentrated in three interdisciplinary thematic clusters on key societal questions. As integrative main topics for research, doctoral theses and postdoctoral qualifications, they simultaneously offer common ground for collaborative activities on a university-wide basis.

Biomedical Research and Clinical Medicine

This research cluster includes projects on experimental tumour research, medical psychology and behavioural immunobiology (pain, stress, coping with illness), on molecular genetics (obesity and eating disorders), and on the role of gender differences in differentiated diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.

Particular highlights of 2016 and 2017 were the DFG sub-projects TP A10 “From Pavlov to pain: extinction learning in visceral pain” (2017– 2021) and TP A12 “The impact of inflammation on the extinction of pain-related fear in humans” within Collaborative Research Centre SFB/ CRC 1280 Extinction Learning (2017–2021), as well as the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) project “Development of an Open Exchange Platform ‘GenderMed Wiki’” (2016–2017). Research in this cluster has been supported by a lecture series on “Gender aspects in Biomedical Research and Clinical Medicine”, which aims to raise awareness of the impact of gender differences in pre-clinical and clinical research and in clinical medicine and the broader context of health/illness. The talks are held as part of the medical faculty’s “Tuesday Seminar” at Essen University Hospital and are intended for its researchers, clinicians and young scientists as well as the interested public.

Working Environments | Action Strategies | Power Structures

Starting from a conception of labour that encompasses both paid work and unpaid caregiving, the cluster focuses on empirical and theoretical study of work in context, investigation of action strategies, and analysis of societal power structures from a historical, cultural and intersectional perspective. In 2016, research in this cluster was also strengthened by the appointment of the Network Chair for Sociology specialising in Social Inequality and Gender Research.

Among the participating researchers’ projects, special mention should be made of the DFG projects “Female Employment Patterns, Fertility, Labor Market Reforms, and Firms” (2017–2020) within the DFG Priority Programme SPP 1764 “The German Labour Market in a Globalised World: Challenges through Trade, Technology and Demographics”, and “The Ambivalent Importance of Corporate Structures for the Explanation of Social Inequality between Women and Men – Analyses with the SOEP-LEE” (2016– 2018). Other noteworthy projects include studies conducted or planned within the North Rhine- Westphalian Ministry of Innovation, Science and Research (MIWF NRW) projects “Gender-Report 2017: Professional Orientation of Women and Men Doctors in Specialist Medical Qualification at Universities in NRW” (2014–2017) and “Gender Report 2019: Gender (in)equality at Universities in NRW” (2017–2019).

Since 2017, the interdisciplinary EKfG project group Effects of Digitalisation has been exploring the gender-specific impact of changes in the substance and organisation of paid work in the digital age on labour participation.

Another highlight is organisation of an interdisciplinary symposium on “Violence, War and Gender in the Middle Ages” (2016), financed by the Volkswagen Foundation. The BMBF research consortium “Health Literacy in Childhood and Adolescence (HLCA) – A Target for Health Promotion and Primary Prevention” (2015–2018), coordinated by the University of Bielefeld, has been granted a second funding period (2018– 2020) and includes a cross-disciplinary project by the EKfG as cooperation partner. Collaboration with the Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum took place under the BMBF project “GENERGIE – Gender in Energy Technology“ (2015–2017).

Perception | Representation | Visibility

The third interdisciplinary cluster brings together scientific enquiry into the genderspecific differences and similarities in perceptions, representations and (in)visibility of women and men in language and imagery. The subjects and disciplines involved in this work investigate these questions in literature, art and language, society, media and politics. The cluster also combines historical and contemporary research, often containing an intercultural perspective, on an interdisciplinary basis.

Special mention must be made of the contribution of cluster members to the proposal for a research unit on “Ambiguity and difference. Historical-cultural dynamics”, in which the EKfG is a collaborating institution. The newly founded interdisciplinary EKfG project group Privacy and Gendering looks at changes in media offerings and visibility and the discussion or re-definition of the public and the private sphere.

Research in this cluster has been supported by organisation of transdisciplinary research seminars with external guests from South Africa, Pakistan, the USA and Australia, which primarily focused on intersectional and postcolonial perspectives. International collaboration was also extended with the acquisition of funding under the Philipp Schwartz Initiative of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation by the Chair of Postcolonial Studies to host the gender researcher Prof. Shirin Zubair, PhD from Pakistan (2016-2017).

The College’s commitment to an intersectional perspective is further underlined by a publication edited by EKfG members, “Einschließungen und Ausgrenzungen. Zur Intersektionalität von Religion, Geschlecht und sozialem Status für religiöse Bildung” (Inclusions and exclusions. On the intersectionality of religion, gender and socio-economic status for religious education) together with the Arbeitsstelle interreligiöses Lernen (Knauth & Jochimsen 2017), as well as by cooperation with the Politics and Gender working group in the German Political Science Association (DVPW) during the group’s 2017 annual conference “Intersectional and postcolonial feminist perspectives as instruments of critique in political science”. Possibilities of closer collaboration within the university have also been explored with its main research area “Transformation of Contemporary Societies” and the Interdisciplinary Center for Migration and Integration Research (InZentIM), founded in 2016.