In the second part of the Song of the Nibelungs, Kriemhild's attempts to bring her husband Siegfried's murderer to justice for this offence are repeatedly mentioned. At the end of the story, the protagonist takes revenge on Hagen with her own hands. In the course of the plot and in the revenge scene itself, various themes and problems of contemporary law are dealt with. One complex of problems is the question of Kriemhild's guilt for the widespread destruction of both the Burgundian League, to which Hagen also belongs, and the warriors of Etzel, the ruler of the Huns and Kriemhild's second husband. The lecture will show the literary means by which this question is thematised in the Song of the Nibelungs and what answers the text offers. Normative legal texts of the 12th and early 13th centuries will form both the point of reference and the foil of contrast. The aim of the lecture is to contribute to the analysis of the gender order of the world imagined in the Song of the Nibelungs from the perspective of contemporary law. It will become clear that the literary text cannot be reduced to the statements of factual writings, but that the specific aesthetics of the Song of the Nibelungs play a central role in the knowledge-historical analysis of Kriemhild's guilt.

Presentation at the conference Equality, Growth & Sustainability Do they mix?at Linköping University, Sweden, 25 November 2010

Is our brain our destiny? Are the structures of our thoughts and actions predetermined? Are gender differences fixed in the brain?

In her lecture, Sigrid Schmitz will explore the field of tension of a determinant and at the same time nodulable brain from a gender perspective. In particular, she will explore the question of how gender aspects are linked to standardisation strategies in current neurotechnological developments within the framework of social optimisation discourses. Along these analyses, she will also introduce current feminist approaches in Science & Technology Studies.

In her research project entitled "Visual Imagery and Invisible Gender in Electricity", Helene Götschel examines the history of electricity and its historiography from a gender perspective. A gender analysis of the actors in the early history of electricity and the models or pictorial symbolism they developed makes gender relations visible, for example in organisational structures, socialisation processes, technical terms, interpretations of the world and epistemological positions. The lecture presents the results of Prof Götschel's current research project and central findings of international gender research on physics. At the same time, it provides an introduction to gender research in the physical sciences using numerous illustrative examples.

Are people with gender knowledge in demand in the world of work? For which academic appointments does a degree programme in Gender Studies qualify? Where can the diversity and interdisciplinarity of Gender Studies be applied in academic appointments? The lecture series "Gender Studies and career prospects" in the winter semester 2008/09 is dedicated to these questions and focuses on the experiences of practitioners from different professional fields who are graduates of Gender Studies or who have specialised in Gender Studies in their respective disciplines in their studies or academic appointments. The diverse experiences of these practitioners provide a framework for suggestions, questions and exchange on career orientation after a degree in Gender Studies.

Teachers are confronted with pedagogical challenges posed by pupils. The research project presented here focuses on the question of how primary school pupils - especially those who belong to the (diffuse) category of "at-risk pupils" - and their parents are perceived and how heterogeneous pupil biographies are dealt with: What directs teachers' attention? How are biographical risks and resilience potentials perceived, which interpretations and approaches are used and where do teachers reach their limits?

The lunchtalk will look at initial analyses of biographical case histories with regard to doing gender processes.

Young adult novels that thematise female adolescence represent social discourses. They reflect the developmental challenges with which female adolescents are confronted, write them and continue them. Using selected currently popular youth literary texts, the aim is to highlight concepts of femininity, body ideals and heterosexual norms and to take a critical look at their literary reproductions. With reference to Judith Butler's model of the heterosexual matrix, the analysis will focus in particular on the entanglements and interactions of normative conceptions of gender, body and sexuality.

The emergence of the new type of university 'Fachhochschule' in the course of the differentiation of the tertiary education sector at the end of the 1960s should at the same time have led to a new professional differentiation in the higher education sector. De facto, a new professional position was also signalled by the definition of formal additional entry requirements for professors at universities of applied sciences in comparison to university professorships. A special feature of this position is the combination of academic and practical professional achievements.

Can professorships at universities of applied sciences be assessed as an independent academic position or has the differentiation of the tertiary education sector led to paradoxical effects in that professorships at universities of applied sciences tend to be 'prevented' from becoming university professors, as assumed in higher education research?

Could this be particularly true for women for whom - due to exclusion dynamics on the path to a university professorship - a professorship at a university of applied sciences proves to be an adequate career alternative?

These questions will be answered by analysing the qualification paths of female professors at universities of applied sciences in Lower Saxony, their professional situations before their academic appointment, their expectations before taking up the position and the assessment of their current professional situation.

Feminist scholars across the academic disciplines have analysed gendered knowledge about the meaning of male-female and other (white-nonwhite, heterosexual-homosexual, etc.) differences. More than 35 years of recent feminist scholarship have produced challenges to methods, methodologies, and even epistemologies in all fields of knowledge. This work has opened new and exciting areas of study, encouraged new ways of asking and investigating questions, and produced new knowledge.

The sciences have also come under analytical eyes of scholars in the
sciences, philosophy, and sociology of science. Feminist science studies claims to improve science, while also promoting the use of science to increase, rather than decrease, social justice. That scholarship requires the recognition of the influence of political views on the content and development of the various fields in the sciences.
Professor Spanier will focus on how feminist perspectives on the sciences have affected biology at all levels of scale (populations, organisms, organs, cells, and molecules). She proposes that the concept of "strong objectivity" articulated by philosopher of science Sandra Harding becomes a critical issue in women's health and in educating.

Critics and sceptics of feminism may see "feminism and science" as contradiction. The history of feminist engagement with science (in the United States) includes significant examples of feminism and science working together in synergy, creating more accurate science while supporting equality for women. Bonnie Spanier's analysis of molecular biology through a feminist lens exposed the power of masculinist ideology to distort our understanding of biology at the cell and molecular levels. The consequences of not controlling for sexist/racist beliefs in the sciences are illustrated in the predominant approaches to treating and curing cancer.
Professor Spanier's application to breast cancer of Sandra Harding's "strong objectivity" provides a powerful and necessary tool for bio-medical research to benefit women's lives.

In many countries there is current anxiety about increasing crime rates and deteriorating educational performances of boys in relation to girls and the decreasing likelihood that young men will establish long-lasting relationships with partners and their children. This has often been referred to as a 'crisis in masculinity'. Many explanations have been put forward for this supposed 'crisis'. However, relatively little attention has been paid to boys' own views on what motivates them to perform as they do. This talk will analyse notions of 'crisis' from boys' own perspectives. It will focus particularly on how boys negotiate a place for themselves in what they see as a masculine hierarchy by giving examples of what 11-14 year old boys living in London say about their relationships with other people.

The planned dissertation is based on interviews with 65 female mathematics professors in Germany, who were interviewed between July 2002 and June 2003 as part of a research project led by Prof. Dr Karin Flaake and Prof. Dr Irene Pieper-Seier. In view of the very low proportion of women in professorships in mathematics compared to other subjects (5% in 2003), the question of the conditions for the success of female university careers in mathematics was investigated. The ways in which female mathematicians deal with the diverse and also contradictory demands they face in their academic appointments and everyday life as women can be traced in the interviews. In the lunch talk, in-depth hermeneutic interpretations will be presented by way of example and further questions as well as possible theoretical integrations will be discussed.

25 years ago - as part of the UN Year of Disabled People in 1981 - disabled women drew public attention for the first time to the fact that their life situation differs in many areas from that of disabled men due to the interplay of disability and female gender. At that time, disabled people were a genderless mass, "the disabled". Disabled women also had no place in the relatively young movements of the time: the women's movement perceived them primarily as disabled people for whom it did not feel responsible; and in the male-dominated disability movement, gender was not an issue. As a result, disabled women soon began to organise themselves. Over the past 25 years, disabled women have achieved a great deal: their persistence has led to their demands being heard in social policy and subsequently incorporated into legislation. Since 1981, much has changed in the way we think about both gender and disability, but it remains clear that disability is different for women and men. The lunchtalk will present how the interplay of gender and impairment affects the lives of disabled people and how this is reflected in disability studies, among other things.

Masculinity, like femininity, is a social construct. And there is not just one, but a multitude of masculinities that are hierarchised among each other and situated in specific historical, cultural and social contexts. These findings have now become a commonplace in gender studies. But what additional insights can a perspective on masculinities that is critical of heteronormativity provide?
Research to date has focussed almost exclusively on the study of heterosexual masculinities. In my lecture, I start from the thesis that men's studies thus continue to perpetuate naturalising ideas of masculinity that a perspective critical of heteronormativity is able to deconstruct. Using the example of the nude photographs of the trans man Loren Cameron, I will explore the question of which visual strategies and which cultural codes and ideas of masculinity the photographs use to produce the effect of evident masculinity and simultaneously exhibit this effect as cultural - and thus contribute to a denaturalisation of our idea of "naked bodies". Secondly, I ask to what extent the narration of the photographs shifts hegemonic notions of masculinity and transsexuality. Finally, I will discuss the ambivalent effects and modes of action that Cameron's works unfold.

"Public man - private woman" - does that still apply today? Do girls really sit quietly and at home on the sheltered islands of "isolated childhood" while the boys conquer the world outside? Are public spaces predominantly "spaces of fear" for women? And what role can the conception and design of public spaces play for equal participation of the sexes? The lecture will deal with these questions on the basis of recent research findings.

As a female, white Afrikaner Alette Delport grew up in South Africa in the heyday of apartheid. Based on the neo stoic theory of emotions as put forward by the philosopher Martha Nussbaum Delport reflects her personal 'emotional' migration using an autobiographic view. She deals with the construction of identities and the necessity to renegotiate an Afrikaner identity in post-apartheid South Africa in order to enable a positive transformation.

Works of art, especially films, reflect social processes. For example, the "crisis of masculinity" is thematised in some American cinema films of the 1990s (such as "American Beauty" or "American Psycho"). However, films can also be a medium of experiential self-knowledge in which young men mirror themselves and learn something about themselves. And they can be used in the reconstruction of male personality development. This will be illustrated using the film "Fight Club" by David Fincher as an example.

In everyday social life, physical contact is subject to a clear set of rules that prescribe the type of relationships within which it is possible to touch one's counterpart. Some professional groups are exempt from the touching taboo. This also includes sports teachers. The dissertation project presented here uses a social constructivist gender perspective to analyse their patterns of interpretation of physical contact with their pupils. To this end, a qualitative research design was chosen, which aims to generate its findings from video observation and focussed interviews in accordance with grounded theory. Different patterns of interpretation are presented on the basis of several case studies.

If men who do boys' work were asked, or even if a cursory glance were taken at the literature, the answer to the question of what boys' work is would probably be: an attitude or a point of view - often explicitly differentiated from viewing boys' work as a method. However, attitudes or perspectives do not initially include actions, content or goals. At least didactic reflections would be expected. However, all that is usually found is a reference to why boys' work is necessary. These arguments usually refer to the specific problems of boys and their socialisation. But what does and what could constitute boys' work in terms of content and what can a term like boys' work actually mean? These are questions that are more difficult to answer than the available literature suggests - and much more difficult than it appears in the public discourse of the "post-PISA era", in which "the problem of boys" is no longer primarily charged with the problem of violence, but with the "educational losers boys", who should now be helped by boys' work.
The attempt to clarify the term and an understanding of the aims and content of boys' work will be at the forefront of the discussion, as well as the question of the extent to which boys' work can be realised in this understanding in educational institutions, especially schools.

Illegality is perceived as a phenomenon that is located far away from one's own sphere of life, at the margins of society. In this lecture, however, it will be made clear that this phenomenon can be found in the centre of our society, namely in the private sphere, where migrant women care for children and the elderly as domestic workers, cook, clean and do care work. As long as there is no "green card" for this area of work, those working in it will continue to be illegalised.

The body was and is a central location for the construction of identities. According to postmodern theories, gender and body are constructed. Although gender and body are perceived as real, these perceptions are culturally and socially constructed and symbolically mediated.
The project aims to investigate the extent to which cultural, media and global standardisation forces young women in particular to justify certain patterns of behaviour when dealing with their bodies, to hide behind them and to construct specific (gender) identities. The research is particularly interested in finding out which strategies of action and body strategies young women develop and which positionings arise with regard to genderised and sexualised identities.

Adolescence refers to the phase in life history in which physical, psychological and social processes interact with each other in a special way. With the departure from childhood, adolescents embark on a new path of gender-specific self-discovery and the localisation of their biographically acquired and evolving gender affiliation in society. The role played by traditional images of femininity and masculinity as well as gender-specific attributions and the concrete significance of the parents and siblings of adolescents in this process will be the subject of discussion in this Lunch Talk. The focus will be on an exemplary analysis of a biographical-narrative interview conducted as part of a qualitative research study on adolescent developmental trajectories of young women of Iranian origin.

In recent decades, women's and gender studies have not only become established in universities in the Western world, but also in the Arab world. This is the basis of a scientific network within the framework of the German-Arab university dialogue between the universities of Oldenburg, Fez (Morocco), Sana'a (Yemen) and Aden (Yemen). The conceptual starting points are the critical examination of research approaches that question essentialist assumptions and the debate on a transversal (science) policy in order to develop the framework structures for transcultural dialogue, joint research and transnational teaching. Under the umbrella theme of politics and gender, questions of women's citizenship will be analysed: What opportunities for political participation and representation do women have in Germany, in Morocco, in Yemen? What potential for change is there? Another thematic focus of the project is the connection between gender and violence. What are effective measures to combat violence against women in both the private and public sphere?

The everyday life of university teaching is little researched, although or precisely because all academics have gone through it. Who talks to whom for how long and how may have consequences for the learning atmosphere and the transfer of knowledge. And what significance does the gender of the actors involved have here? In her empirical study, Dr Senganata Münst focused on these interaction processes in academic teaching and observed courses over a longer period of time. She focused on the courses offered in the degree programmes Physics, Biology, Computing Science and Spatial Planning and a cross-study block seminar in Education. The guiding questions of the micro-analytical observation of social interactions and forms of knowledge transfer were: How is teaching structured? How do teachers and students behave in direct teaching-learning interactions? What opportunities for participation do students have and utilise in courses? As an ethnologist and sociologist, Ms Münst observed these processes from the perspective of a "stranger" looking at the "familiar". Her aim is not to expose failures, but to enable teachers to observe themselves in a way that is not accessible in everyday university life. In her lecture, Ms Münst focuses on the connections between teaching structures and gender relations. Using various examples, she presents interaction mechanisms that attribute subject-specific expertise to people of the male gender and prevent the association of subject-specific expertise with people of the female gender. The examples of interaction refer to teachers of different status groups and students.

Fantasies and ideas about menstruation are closely related to conscious and unconscious fantasies about the entire female body. Based on a psychoanalytical text interpretation of an interview with a young woman, various psychological meanings of menstruation are shown.
Women were interviewed who no longer have their periods due to the side effects of modern contraceptives. The decision to stop menstruating was given special significance in the analysis.

Sweden has a large number of gender equality projects in schools. How are issues of gender difference between girls and boys, women and men dealt with at school? What role does the connection between gender issues and migration background play?
Malwine Seemann reports on experiences in Swedish schools on the basis of interviews conducted for her dissertation project. She works in the field of women's policy at GEW and ZFG.

Boys with a migrant background are generally widely perceived as a problem group and conspicuously congregate in the Hauptschule. Here, boys often lack the opportunity to break out of their social contexts, emancipate themselves in their conceptions of masculinity and thus open up other possibilities for action. In addition, stigmatisation and traditional representation intertwine in school interactions and create unfavourable conditions for the learning environment. In addition, the institution of school as a complex organisation often has difficulties in responding appropriately to the diverse and individual problems of these pupils. In this Lunch Talk, methodological and content-related aspects of a research project on this topic will be addressed and discussed.

The realisation that gender cannot be adequately understood without other structural categories such as class and "race" has become widely accepted in German women's and gender studies. In relation to the issue of racism, however, the focus on non-white women constructed as "deviants" persists. Whiteness as a social norm, which significantly shapes the perspectives of white women gender researchers, is rarely problematised.
In her lecture, Eske Wollrad will provide an insight into the current state of whiteness research and analyse dominant constructions of gender as a meta-category in contemporary women's and gender studies. Finally, she will outline central findings of Black feminist knowledge production.

The academic literature on the genocide of Sinti and Roma has so far barely considered the topic of gender; questions about gender-specific victim experiences or chances of survival, or about gender-specific elements in the actions and motivations of the perpetrators and their portrayal have hardly been asked.
The core of the lecture is based on research into a case study of the persecution of the Central German Sinti, focussing on the relationships between Sinti and Gadje (non-"Gypsies") in the run-up to the deportation to Auschwitz in 1943 and in the post-war period. Using texts and photographs, Dr Rosenhaft will open up an approach to the events and experiences of the Holocaust that can adequately incorporate the sensitive topic of sexuality - including the staging and self-staging of those involved not only as "gendered" but also as "sexual subjects".

Ideas of "male technology" go back to the professionalisation of the engineering profession and the shaping of gender-specific divisions of labour in the industrialisation process. In my research, I therefore analyse the connection between technical competence and gender in the 18th century. I go in search of clues as to which techniques and competences were attributed to women and men in economic-technological projects launched by absolutist rulers at the interface of "useful art" and "technology" in the transition from craftsmanship to industrial production, and how these in turn influenced designs of masculinity and femininity. Specifically, I will examine the manufactories of the breeding and labour house St. Georgen am See in the Principality of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (faience manufactory, marble manufactory, playing card manufactory, glass cutting factory, fine cloth manufactory with cotton spinning mill).

The experiences of Soviet Jewish survivors of the German war of extermination 1941-44 were largely excluded from official Soviet historiography and memory. In my work, I would like to focus on the memories of Jewish women and children and also on how they continued to live in the USSR after the end of the Second World War. On the basis of life history interviews, I aim to reconstruct the extermination policy from the victims' perspective as well as their struggle for survival. The focus here is on forms of resistance that are labelled as "female" and are undervalued in the hegemonic discourse in comparison to the heroised military and "male" connoted actions. Based on this, the Soviet politics of memory will be analysed in order to investigate the causes and mechanisms of the exclusion of this memory from the collective memory. With reference to
approaches to the theory of memory, I would like to use the example of Soviet memory of the "Great Patriotic War" to determine power relations between cultural and individual memory. The question will be under what conditions and in what way non-hegemonic memories could and can be preserved.

This lecture will present the medical view of intersexuality as a disorder of sexual differentiation and intersexuality as a form of sexual variation, including its implications for intersexuals and their parents. Both concepts will then be discussed against the background of normative bisexuality and heteronormativity.

In recent years, differentiated men's studies have also developed in the Federal Republic of Germany. Based on central gender-theoretical considerations of men's research, the lecture will first present central building blocks of male identity. On the basis of current studies on the changing attitudes of men, fracture lines of hegemonic masculinity will then be outlined and emerging trends of change in male identity will be analysed.

In recent years, smaller subjects such as Islamic Studies, Turkish Studies, Iranian Studies, etc. have been accused of lacking topicality. Social sciences and modern history, on the other hand, which focus on the Arab-Islamic region, are under threat of cuts. In sharp contrast to this is the increasing demand for knowledge about societies characterised by Muslims. Understanding transformation and migration processes requires knowledge about changes in gender relations. The structural reform of universities that is taking place as part of the Bologna Process means that new emphases need to be placed on teaching. With funding from the Federal Foreign Office, the DAVO's Gender Working Group has developed two modules at BA and MA level on gender relations in the Middle East, North Africa and Eurasia, which meet these requirements through interdisciplinarity and international co-operation.

In Sweden, gender equality efforts in the school sector are more firmly anchored than in many other European countries. What are the socio-political factors that determine the Swedish education system? What role do authorities and teachers' unions play in implementing equal opportunities in schools? What routines, risks and good examples are there? Malwine Seemann describes the Swedish gender equality situation on the basis of interviews conducted in the country. She works in the field of women's policy at the GEW and the ZFG (Centre for Interdisciplinary Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Oldenburg)

Girls have only been allowed to learn maths since 1908; before that, girls' secondary schools were still forbidden to deal with algebraic expressions. Only pure maths lessons had been part of girls' secondary education, the practical learning of basic arithmetic and the rule of three. Everything a future housewife and mother needed to live.
Or was that perhaps not enough after all? Did a woman need a logical education? Was she even capable of it?
Was maths only necessary for those girls who wanted to take regular A-levels from 1908? Or did the exact sciences, which had only just fought for equal rights with the humanistic educational goods, also have a justification because they educated the mind? Perhaps it was also the case that girls were capable of doing maths, but lacked the interest? Were women like Sophia Kovalevskaya and Sophie Germain just exceptions, or could they have many colleagues if only all women were given the opportunity?

All these questions were discussed in specialised journals, and from today's perspective, some of the views expressed were outrageous. But not only! Above all, those mathematicians who attempted to teach maths to girls quickly jumped into the fray on behalf of their female students and reported on their positive experiences.

However, the introduction of maths in girls' schools was by no means the end of the debate: Could girls learn the same amount of maths as boys? Did they need a special, different method? What would a method look like that took into account the specific female characteristics? Should arithmetic lessons be curtailed just to make time for maths lessons?
Over seventy articles from forty years were analysed and attempts were made to answer these and other questions.

The Degendering Science project was launched at the University of Hamburg in the winter semester 2002 with courses at the interface of natural sciences and gender studies. Based at the Institute for Didactics of Natural Sciences (subject of Educational Science), it is aimed primarily at students of Gender Studies and prospective teachers of natural science subjects. In Hamburg, Gender Studies can also be taken as a Diplom elective or minor subject by students of Physics, Computing Science and Mathematics. In our presentation, we will focus in particular on the development of a module "Gender Studies and Natural Sciences", the design of which is intended to do justice to this heterogeneous student body. We look forward to a lively discussion on this "work in progress"!

Modern imaging techniques promise a view into the living body or into the living and working brain. I would like to trace the power of these digital body images and make transparent which decisions and inscriptions of gender concepts can also be found in these supposedly so objective procedures. Using the example of the "new" brain images, I would like to show such processes of naturalisation and standardisation through modern digital visualisation practices, because research into gender differences in the brain is (once again) at the centre of the attribution of behaviour, performance and the thinking of men and women to biological causes. I will analyse theories, research practices, contradictory findings, their presentation and use in the discussion about the brain and gender. Finally, using the concept of brain plasticity, I would like to show how the brain can also be understood as the result of different experiences.
Science always takes place in a social context. It is therefore important to use the tools of gender research to scrutinise the logic of scientific argumentation. This article is also intended to provide non-specialists with starting points for a critical approach to "scientific" statements about the gendered brain.

Short CV:
Sigrid Schmitz works at the Institute for Computing Science and Society at the University of Freiburg on the GERDA project, a critical information system on gender and the brain. Together with Prof. Britta Schinzel, she has headed the Competence Forum "Gender Research in Computing Science and Natural Sciences (GIN) since 2002. Since October 2002 she has been a university lecturer on the "Mediatisation of the Natural Sciences and Gender Research" at the University of Freiburg; Aigner-Rollett Visiting Professor for Gender Research in the Natural Sciences at the University of Graz in the summer semester 2003; guest lecturer for Gender in the Natural Sciences at the University of Basel in the summer semester 2004.

In her autobiography, Berlin journalist and therapist Ika Hügel-Marshall describes the contradiction of being at home in Germany and yet excluded because of the colour of her skin. She soberly describes her childhood in a small Bavarian town as the daughter of a white German woman and a black American soldier, her youth in a home and boarding school as well as her struggle as a feminist activist within the white women's movement, which was characterised by racist structures of oppression. It was only late in life - at the age of 39 - that she met other Afro-Germans and writes about her involvement in building the Black movement in Germany.

Skin colour marks an almost insurmountable boundary between society and the minority marginalised on the basis of appearance. Women with a dark skin colour are the target of multiple forms of discrimination. Not only because of their appearance, but also because of their gender, they are treated as foreign bodies and are not accepted. They are treated as exotic, not as part of the society to which they belong. Self-perception is at odds with the perception of others and thus with the treatment of those around them, as the lecture will show. It is about identity construction of so-called Black women who live in societies that perceive themselves as "white".

Deviant action strategies of socially marginalised young men have repeatedly been interpreted in men's research as an expression of identification with very traditional mission statements of masculinity (the fighter, the strong worker, the protector). A distinction is rarely made between the situational and often collective recourse to clichés of masculinity and the biographical appropriation of gender. As a result, masculinity is quickly taken for what boys and men do, without the significance of their actions in the context of biographical developmental conflicts in adolescence having been analysed. However, if a biographical perspective is applied, supposedly unambiguous ideals of masculinity usually turn out to be an expression of the confrontation with rather diffuse ideas of manhood, whereby a complex dynamic of autonomy aspirations on the one hand and attachment desires on the other unfolds. These adolescent conflicts come to a head for young men serving a custodial sentence, as their conflicts over autonomy are exacerbated by the intervention of social control.
Such constellations of experience will be analysed in the planned lecture: The starting point for a consideration of masculinity conflicts is the biographical processing of a deprivation of liberty. As a basis for the considerations, qualitative longitudinal interviews will be used, which have been collected for several years in a study by the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony with young prisoners during and after their imprisonment. It will be shown that the link between deviance and gender does not refer to unambiguous concepts of masculinity, but rather to the lasting biographical conflicts of adolescent men. This also gives rise to considerations, but above all further-reaching questions about male adolescence.

Dr Mechthild Bereswill holds a Diplom degree in social sciences and her work focuses on sociology and social psychology. She has been teaching at the University of Hanover since 1994 and this semester she is a visiting professor at the University of Applied Sciences Hildesheim/Holzminden/Göttingen, offering courses in the context of gender studies. For several years, Ms Bereswill has been working at the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony, where she designed and carried out the qualitative part of an extensive longitudinal study entitled "Prison and its consequences" - on the basis of this research, which focuses on the prison experiences and biographies of young men, she is currently planning a new research project on the "Significance of work for the biographical masculinity designs of adolescents".

The lecture consists of a theoretical part in which Maisha Maureen Eggers uses a theory of racism to illustrate the ways in which racialisation structures the lifeworlds of white and black people and accordingly produces a racialised social order. In the second part, she will address the impact of this racialisation on the production of identities, especially hegemonic white identities. She will work with an exercise from the transcultural approach.

CDU minister: "Too many female teachers". this newspaper article will be the starting point for the lecture. The problem of so-called "feminisation" has been considered by women's studies since the mid-1970s. Co-education research also took up the topic back in the 1980s in order to highlight the problem of learning by example and the associated fixation of the gender-related division of labour in the world of work. In 2004, Germany still has the lowest proportion of women in management positions in Europe. My presentation will focus on what it means for the life planning of girls and boys to be cared for and brought up mainly by women between the ages of 0 and 12 and why it makes no sense to blame women for any associated disadvantages for boys.

Prof. Dr. Petra Milhoffer,
Prof. Dr. rer. pol., born in 1946, studied sociology, psychology, politics and education in Frankfurt/Main and at the FU Berlin, has been a professor at the University of Bremen for "Socialisation and political education in the elementary and primary sector" since 1974, and has been a professor for "Primary school education with a focus on subject teaching/social sciences" since 1996.
Main areas of work: Sex education, library education, women's studies, socialisation research, subject teaching, comparative school research (especially Canada)

This lecture deals with medical and legal constructions of bisexuality using the example of transsexuality in the Federal Republic of Germany as well as the resistance to normalisation and naturalisation of bisexuality, as is becoming apparent in the course of discussions on the revision of the Transsexuals Act.
The essays are divided into three parts. The first segment deals with the relationship between the law and the medical-psychiatric establishment as well as with the assumptions about morphological and social gender and sexuality as laid down in the law and as they manifest themselves in the standards for the treatment and assessment of transsexuality in the dominant medical-psychiatric discourse. At the same time, normalising and naturalising definitions are subject to the dynamics of social and political power constellations. They are therefore by no means static. The second part therefore deals with current reactions of the transsexual movement to the Transsexuals Act, which have emerged in the course of internal and social developments.
The third part deals with concrete proposals from the medical community and parts of the transsexual, intersexual and lesbian and gay movement for a revision of the law. The proposals for revision make it clear that it is a question of recognising a variety of morphological genders and expressions of gender and sexuality versus defending the normalised gender binary.

Although the numbers of female first-year students at universities show that there are now just as many women as men studying for a degree, women are still severely underrepresented in engineering and Computing Science degree programmes. This fact has been deplored for years, and efforts have been made at universities by the women's offices and in some cases the departments to attract young women to such courses, albeit mostly without resounding success. "Gender mainstreaming" as a concept for the implementation of gender equality is used as a buzzword at universities, but mainly where it is absolutely necessary for the acquisition of funds (e.g. 6th EU Framework Programme). To ensure that the strategy of "gender mainstreaming" is not merely a "rhetorical modernisation" (Wetterer, 2002), it must also be implemented in teaching. The term "teaching" is used here to refer to both the level of subject content and subject didactics as well as the level of interaction between teachers and students and the study conditions of the subject and the university. The lecture will report on experiences with the existing women's degree programmes and present the status of the "Gender Mainstreaming Business Informatics" project.

Does gainful employment keep women healthy or is it more of a burden that makes them ill? In order to clarify this question, both gainful employment and reproductive labour must be included in the empirical analysis. Taking into account historical perspectives on (women's) gainful employment, the lecture will trace social and individual moments of repression but also the integration of women in the labour market and reflect on their significance for health.

Frauke Koppelin, Dr rer. biol. hum., Professor of Health Sciences in the Department of Social Work at the Oldenburg/Ostfriesland/Wilhelmshaven University of Applied Sciences. Main areas of work: Quality assurance in public health teaching; social support, stress management research, women's health research, work and health. Spokesperson for the working group on women and health in the German Society for Medical Sociology and the Teaching Commission of the German Society for Public Health.

Systems and processes for the treatment of drinking water are available worldwide. Despite this, more than 5 million people die every year from diseases transmitted by contaminated drinking water. The major difficulty in supplying drinking water often lies in the provision of the necessary energy sources. Energy is generally lacking in rural regions. This closes the circle: no infrastructure means no energy, which in turn means no clean drinking water. By utilising renewable energy sources - including solar energy - the supply of drinking water can be ensured in rural regions in developing countries, for example.
However, the realisation of a project is not limited to the technical implementation of the solution to a technical problem. The social impact of the technology should or must be taken into account. It is often the women who have to travel long distances to fetch water from distant rivers or springs (6 kilometres one way is not uncommon). The consequences are no time for schooling and thus a disadvantage for women.

The debates about women and Islam were always present in discourses on women's status in North Yemen before unification. In the meantime, questions pertaining to women's status in South Yemen were incorporated into broader accounts of social change and development. Since the 1960s, but even more in the 1980s, questions about social transformation, namely modernisation emerged in both parts of Yemen. This discourse about transition had its support in the semi-liberal approach in the northern part and the Marxist approach in the southern part of the country. After the unification, with the strong presentation of southern women in most strata of the newly emerging state, the discourse on women and Islam emerged with renewed vigour in the 1990s. The new constitution gave a prominent place to women, defining them as mothers and citizens. The state encouraged the development of a moderate women's movement to counter the threat posed by both, secular feminism of the south, and liberal feminism of the north. Islamic forces supported by the state institutions have created their own rigid women's movement that recently became the dominant voice of feminism in the country. But in 2003, women in Yemen represent three and a half million voters while men represent four and a half million votes. Will the political power of voting women change women's role? What is the effect of the state's new policy of fighting terrorism and radical Islam on the position of women? These are some of the questions this lecture attempts to tackle.

In the period of 1970s-1989s, we witness the increase of feminist studies in the Western academic arena. In the same time, we find a significant incorporation of various concepts of feminist theory into Middle East studies. Until then, very little was available about or by women in Yemen or the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen represents a very illustrative case for both, liberal feminist approaches and the socialist feminism. Both are rooted in modernisation theory and later in 'Women in Development' studies.
In the 1990s, the world witnessed a change in the political scene that resulted in many transitions, including the Unification of Yemen. In addition to the UN plans to support programmes to integrate gender in the development process, international donors also supported such programmes including academic studies at universities.
After several attempts, the women studies programme started as a Unit in Sanaa University, financed by the Netherlands. The Unit then developed to a centre to provide Diplomas and Master's degrees.
The work of the centre to presented an attempt to engender the university, also aiming at other institutions in the country, thus creating a movement of resistance - until the final closure of the centre in the year 2002.
The discourses of different groups including state authorities on gender issues and the role of the centre will be discussed in this lecture.

In this lecture, central results of an empirical study on the paths taken by women in a highly qualified technical (male) academic appointment will be presented.
In particular, possible access routes and barriers for women in Computing Science will be discussed. The focus is not only on structural barriers, but also on barriers that are rooted in the technology myth of Computing Science.
The study therefore contributes to the discussion of gender research as well as to discussions about the self-image and views of Computing Science.

The aim of the talk is to further assess and develop feminist standpoint theory by introducing the notion of the 'situated imagination' as constituting an important part of this theory as well as that of 'situated knowledge'. The talk argues that the faculty of the imagination constructs as well as transforms, challenges and supersedes both existing knowledge and social reality. However, like knowledge, it is crucial to theorise the imagination as situated, that is, as shaped and conditioned (although not determined) by social positioning.