Gender equality and diversity politics in higher education: Conflicts, challenges and requirements for collaboration

One of the most striking transformations in post-secondary education in Germany is the growing orientation towards diversity management. Diversity is a relatively new idea for German institutions of higher education and has, in contrast to the North American realm, no historical roots in equity policies in Germany. Approaches, as will be argued, currently follow either a “heterogeneity” or an “economic” rationale, which are both limited in their effectiveness of addressing inequality beyond gender. This contribution advances a conceptualization of diversity that is tethered to the idea of equity but view gender relations as one of the lingering inequalities. By discussing the practices of gender equality and diversity management at institutions of higher education in Germany together with their theoretical framing, it will be shown that a conceptualization of diversity can benefit from the paradigms of gender in order to establish a consistent strategy of dismantling inequalities in higher education.