Research Design

In the ‘Gender Innovations’ project, two empirical studies dealing with the disciplines of sociology, political science, economics, history and philosophy are being processed and their results brought together:

• Case studies on the formation of women’s organisations in the above disciplines, for example specific working groups or subsections in scientific associations, will be used to explore how women and gender as a topic and category of knowledge contribute to the institutional, organisational and epistemic development of social sciences and humanities disciplines and associations.

• Selected academic textbooks and introductory literature in the respective social sciences and humanities are analysed to determine whether and how gender-related scientific achievements (including relevant women’s research results) have found their way into the respective scientific canons and are communicated to students via university teaching.

Embedded in the main research method of situational analysis (Adele Clarke 2005), various additional social science research methods are used in the project, including document analysis and guided expert interviews. The empirical material consists of documents, interviews and selected academic textbooks and introductory literature. The data will be analysed using quantitative and qualitative content analysis.

The project thus provides a knowledge base as a foundation for the development of recommendations for action for gender-related and equality-oriented scientific and science policy practice.

The concepts of inclusive excellence (Association of American Colleges & Universities n.d.) and epistemic (in)justice (Miranda Fricker 2009; Ian James Kidd, José Medina and Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. 2017) serve as theoretical brackets for the epistemic positions taken in the two subprojects. They are used to critically classify and evaluate the empirical results.