The category of gender is relevant in almost all academic disciplines – from the humanities and social sciences to law, medicine, natural sciences, and engineering. As the German Science and Humanities Council (Wissenschaftsrat) points out, research that deals with society, people, and their artifacts can only achieve an appropriate level of complexity and quality if it "does not view society as a gender-free space and people as genderless beings" (Council of Science and Humanities: Recommendations for the further development of gender research in Germany, 2023, p. 7).
Gender research examines, on the one hand, the category of gender itself and asks, for example, how gender relations and identities are formed, what significance and function they have in societies, and how these change. On the other hand, gender can become a relevant analytical category when investigating all research topics. Often, gender research articulates a doubly critical approach: firstly, by adopting a perspective that questions the interweaving of gender with relations of power and domination. Secondly, it engages with the power-laden dynamics of knowledge production and the academic system itself.
The GRADE Center Gender at Goethe University Frankfurt is open to both orientations of gender research and understands Gender Studies as an interdisciplinary and open field of research, in which a wide range of topics is explored using different methods. Members of GRADE Gender come from various disciplines, including educational sciences, film studies, human geography, Jewish studies, Korean studies, art education, political science, law, sociology, and theater studies.
One focal point of GRADE Gender is the study of the category of gender in conjunction with other categorizations of difference such as race, class, disability, and age.
GRADE Gender brings together researchers from different scientific disciplines to explore gender as a cross-cutting category. Through its workshops, lecture series, networking and exchange events, funding lines, and other activities, GRADE Gender supports the deepening of theoretical and methodological competencies in the field of gender studies and gives its members the opportunity to discuss current issues and research approaches with researchers and practitioners.