Research Clusters Gainful Employment and Care Work

This cluster (responsible scientists: Prof. Karen Shire Ph.D and Dr. Ute Pascher-Kirsch*) comprises research dealing with the basic conditions and impact of economic and social policies and the corresponding legal provisions on establishing gender equality in the two major socio-economic fields of care work and gainful employment. ­Priority is given in this context to considering the interdependency of these two fields and their effects on the gender relationship.

Funded by the DFG, members of the College investigate what makes partners respect each other, the existence of social imbalance, and the relationship between love and achievement. Among the projects in this research cluster, particular mention should be made of the following: the MERCUR project “Väter in Elternzeit. Aushandlungs- und Entscheidungsprozesse zwischen Paarbeziehung und Betrieb” with colleagues from the University Alliance Ruhr (UA Ruhr) partner universities Bochum and Dortmund (2013–2015), which focuses on fathers on parental leave and the underlying processes of negotiation between the private and the employment realm; the EU project “Study on the gender dimension of trafficking in human beings” (2014–2015); the DFG project “Female Employment Patterns, Fertility, Labor Market Reforms, and Social Norms: A Dynamic Treatment Approach” (2014–2017); and the project “‘Comparable Worth’ – Die blinden Flecken in der Ursache des Gender Pay Gaps”(2015–2018), which is funded by the Hans-Böckler Foundation and explores blind spots in understanding the cause of the gender pay gap. More than half of the research proposals in this cluster were submitted in the context of international research funding programmes.

Selected doctoral theses look into the life ­histories of fathers with their own or family experience of Turkish-German migration, changes in masculinity in the knowledge economy and research-oriented gender equality policy. Since 2013, doctoral students from three universities have been researching as members of the graduate research group “Leben im transformierten Sozialstaat (TransSoz): Zielgruppenspezifische Reformwirkungen und Alltagspraxen” how changed socio-political measures and services have an impact on the lifestyle of adolescents, the elderly, gainfully ­employed people, parents, people with care responsibilities, and migrants.

*until August 2015