Research

As gender researchers, we are committed to a reflexive understanding of science. Central to this is a critical attitude towards the unquestioned taken-for-grantedness of everyday life as well as scientific theories and models of thought and towards one's own standpoints and position in the field of knowledge production. A further aspect of this understanding of science is the focus on the historical genesis of social constructions of gender in interaction with other forms of symbolic domination, above all 'race'/ethnicity, class and sexuality. This understanding of science forms the common orientation framework for research in the Gender working area. The individual projects can be assigned to two major thematic fields: 1/ the entanglement of social and gender order and 2/ the significance of gender for the modes of existence of individuals.

1. the entanglement of social and gender order

Gender studies, as we understand it, is based on the constitutive significance of gender for the emergence and reproduction of social order. The central question is how social order and gender order are historically intertwined in specific and concrete ways. How do the transformations in the economy and in gender relations affect each other? How are different categories of symbolic domination linked in these processes of the production of inequality? With these questions, we tie in with national and international debates in gender studies (keywords include: Neoliberal modes of governance, commodification of care work, care chains, precarisation, dissolution of boundaries and subjectification of work, gender segregation of the gainful employment market). One area of particular interest in this thematic field of research is the connection between the sphere of employment and privacy. How can care be guaranteed in times when gainful employment is centred and the boundaries of gainful employment are blurred? How does the domestic division of labour come about and what role do the state and the private sector play in this?

2. the significance of gender for the modes of existence of individuals

The starting point is the epistemological assumption that gender is not a property of staff, people, but the result of an unstoppable, interactive process of production that takes place within the framework of historically specific social and cultural orders and represents an inseparable requirement. This theoretical understanding is summarised in Simone de Beauvoir's famous formulation: we are not born as women or men, we become them. This includes the structural level of individual existence as well as the assumption of the uniqueness of individuals. Gendered subjects are formed in a specific way as they interact with their environment. Gender does not remain external to individuals; it does not only take place in our heads. Gender and the demands placed on the sexes in our society can be felt, experienced and are therefore real for the subjects in the here and now. To investigate this somatic or bodily-affective dimension of gender, we at AB Gender are currently developing a new method that we call experiential research. We are not only investigating how the social order is enrolled in the body, but above all how the stubbornness of the bodily experience of gender leads to change and newness.

• Dr Banihaschemi, Susan: "Controversial reproduction. Ways of legitimising sperm donation in the reproductive medicine discourse." (completed December 2017). Current news: Bielefeld University, Department of Human Resources and Organisation, Mentoring for female students and academics.
• Dr Büchele, Julia Katharina: "Expat Spouses in Kampala, Uganda: An Ethnography of Migration from the Global North" (completed May 2017, University of Basel, second supervisor Tomke König). Current news: University of Basel, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, administrative assistant (Central Services).
• Both, Göde: "Sustaining autonomous driving (Autonomes Fahren bewahren)" (current doctoral project, University of Cologne) Short abstract
• Grieser, Sebastian: "Care-Räume: Praktiken des Wickelns im Spannungsfeld von Privatheit und Öffentlichkeit" (current, doctoral project, Faculty of Sociology) Short abstract
• Gonzalez, Crus: "Struggling for a piece of land for the family: Women's subjectivation and spatial practices in the regularisation process of urban settlements in Sinaloa, Mexico from the political reform to the lost decade (1976-1988)" (current, doctoral project, second supervisor Tomke König)
• Kappel, Bernd: "Gender self-understandings under the conditions of the diversification of gender concepts. An experiential study of adolescents and young adults" (current, doctoral project, Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies) Short abstract
• Kirchhoff, Nicole: "Body images as products of representation and perception in performances of gender" (current, doctoral project in the DFG-funded project "Sportive Orientierungen und Körperpraktiken von jugendlichen Migrantinnen und Migranten im Spannungsfeld von Schule und Lebenswelt", TU Dortmund University, supervised by Prof. Dr Michael Meuser and Prof. Dr Jörg Thiele) Short abstract
• Kirchhoff, Nicole and Lengersdorf, Diana: "Gender and labour practices in the dissection courses of macroscopic medicine" (current, preliminary project, sponsored by the Faculty of Sociology)
• Lengersdorf, Diana and Tanja Jecht together with Michael Meuser and Diana Baumgarten (TU Dortmund): "Neujustierung von Männlichkeiten. Effects of the transformation of gainful employment and the change in gender relations on male life situations" (current, DFG-funded project)
• Lengersdorf, Diana together with Corinna Bath, Lisa Handel, Stephan Trinkaus and Susanne Völker: "materialisieren - designen - sorgen. Methodologies of Enabling" (in preparation)
• Patch, Holly: "Gender and the Sounding of Self: becoming in trans* singing" (current doctoral project, Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology) Short abstract
• Richter, Susanne: "Performances of femininity in YouTube beauty videos" (current, PhD project, Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology)
• Tarkhanova, Oleksandra: "Gender Regime in Ukraine: The Subject Position of Woman in the Ukrainian Policy Debates" (current, PhD project, Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology) Short abstract
• Dr Wojahn, Katharina: "Commuting at the boundaries of the gender order. An empirical study on the subjectivisation of women who have children and commute" (completed July 2018, doctoral project awarded the Equality Prize of Bielefeld University, Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology)
• Zielke, Nicole: "You don't move old trees ... On the interdependence of bodies, things and spaces in the transition to a retirement home." (completed in 2019, doctoral project, Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology)