Gender Research Data Collections
In recent times, the existence and number of Professorships with a Full or Partial “denomination“ for Women and Gender Studies has been amply discussed in print media, television and online. In these discussions, there are very often false interpretations. Thus, they compare the number of Professorships in single disciplines like Slavic studies, Paleontology or Philosophy of Science to reaffirm their statements that there are many and that the number is constantly rising. This is wrong for the following reasons:
1. Gender research is an interdisciplinary knowledge field and cannot be compared with a traditional single discipline. The professorships with a research focus or specialty („denomination“) in Gender Studies stretch over 30 disciplines. This means that they are usually tied to a different discipline. There are very few Professorships with a full “denomination” for Gender Studies. The majority has a “denomination” for a different single discipline and just a partial “denomination” for Gender Studies. This means that, strictly speaking, they are not Professorships for Gender Studies but only mean that different aspects of Gender Studies are to be considered within the framework of the Professorship.
2. The Professorships are in different salary brackets. Chairs (Professorships that have employees) are rare in this field. The Professorships with a full or partial “denomination” for Gender Studies can usually be found among the lower salary brackets (Junior Professorships or W2- Professorships) and about a third of them have fixed-term contracts.
3. In Germany, the percentage of Professorships with a full or partial denomination for Gender Studies oscillates between 0.4 and 0.5 percent in relation to the total number of Professorships in higher education institutions, and has not changed since the year 2000.
4. An essential aspect to consider in order to add a Professorship to the database is the decision of the institution (expressed in the “denomination”) to create a highly remunerated position for the area of Gender Research/Gender Studies. We can assume that such an institutional decision has been made when the aspect of gender is explicitly expressed in the denomination. For this reason, a not negligible number of researchers that have integrated the gender aspect to their research profile without being instructed to do so as part of their professorship by their institution have been left out of the database. Their number highly surpasses the number of explicit “Professorships with a full or partial denomination for Women and Gender studies”. Their actions obey simply the personal decision to engage primarily with or with a strong focus on the field of Gender research.
For more on this subject see also: Bock, Ulla/Nüthen, Inga (2014): Genderprofessuren eine Erfolgsgeschichte? Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen, in: Femina Politica, Jg. 23, H. 2, S. 154–158.