Equality-related orientations and courses of action of professors against the background of equality-policy regulations

Equality between women and men is constitutionally enshrined in Article 3(3) of the German Constitution, i.e. the state should take action where equality between women and men has not yet been achieved. This constitutional mandate also applies to higher education institutions.

The Council of Science and Humanities and the central science organizations, such as the German Research Foundation (DFG), have also committed themselves to the gender equality standard and link funding partly to the efforts of researchers in their field of work within the meaning of Article 3, Paragraph 2 of the constitution. For example, the member institutions of the DFG formulated so-called "research-oriented equality standards".

In view of these developments and the large number of regulations and incentive systems in research funding, it is surprising that gender equality is progressing only very slowly at universities, especially in terms of the proportion of women at higher career levels. The reasons for this have hardly been researched to date. What is unclear is what the individual actors think about gender equality, i.e. how much individuals know about the various regulations and how this knowledge influences their everyday professional activities.

This research project is concerned with the following questions: what is the most important question for the individual actors in higher education – especially professors as "gatekeepers" for academic careers – with regard to gender equality policy and corresponding measures? Which gender equality measures are known and perceived at all? How do individuals deal with them? How are they implemented? To what extent do these stocks of knowledge become effective as "knowledge leading to change" and contribute to the change of organizational culture and individual action?

The overall aim of the research project is to open up the black box of gender knowledge and to examine whether and how the gender equality knowledge developed in the course of the past decades outside and inside the universities are discursively available in the university today and contribute to the change of organizational gender relations and cultures.

The project results make it clear that gender equality as a topic has "arrived" at the university and that the importance of gender equality measures are not fundamentally doubted by professors, but that at the same time there are reservations about individual instruments, above all quotas. Conflicts are particularly perceived between the demand for excellence/best selection and the demand for the advancement of women/equality. Science appears as a battle arena, which is characterized by competition and the constant need to prove oneself. The low presence of women in the high career positions of the science system is attributed to questions of compatibility and specific values and behaviours.