Centre for Women´s and Gender Studies (FraGes)

Research Activities at the Centre

In 2004 the Centre for Women's and Gender Studies took part in the organisation of a workshop on "Work, Health, and Ageing" in Leipzig and organised a one-day conference research projects, that are funded by a governmental program for gender research (HWP). Three of the four projects are carried out under the responsibility of members of FraGes. These are the following projects:

"The Administration of Prostitution: Saxony-Poland-Czech Republic": (Prof. Dr. Monika Wahlrab-Sahr, Faculty of Theology; Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Fach, Dr. Rebecca Pates, and Daniel Schmidt, Faculty of Social Sciences and Philosophy)

Diversity - Gender - Power (Prof. Dr. Barbara Lange, Faculty of History, Arts, and Oriental Sciences)

Diversity is organised through cultural settings, and difference is the product of this organising. Assuming that apparently obvious binaries such as male/female, black/white, traditional/modern are in fact constructed in order to preserve power, we will focus on the past and present role of gender systems. The focus is on the relation of gender to other concepts of identity including ethnicity or class and how these relations may cause specific political structures and spaces. The project has two subprojects:

• "Visual representations of friendship between women as part of a female network in 18th century" is a PH.D. project (Institute of Art History). Focussing on portraits of friendship of high aristocratic women in France it is asked, how women used the visual culture to build up a network. Their practices are compared to those at the Russian court, where over a long time powerful tsarinas reigned. It should be figured out, if there is indeed a kind of "female" visual culture in 18th century.
• Building up a cooperation with the Centers for Gender Studies at the Universities of Riga (Latvia) and Krakow (Poland) to build up an international graduate program for gender studies. Due to administration problems the cooperation with Krakow will not be continued further on.

"Elisa - Promotion of Elites in Saxony: Women in Natural Science, Engineering and Medicine" (Prof. Dr. Elmar Brähler, Medical Faculty, Prof. Dr. Dorothee Alfermann, Faculty of Sport Science):

• The main aim of the project is to encourage and support gifted female students of natural science, engineering and medicine to pursue an academic career or/and to take over leadership positions in their careers. The project is a cooperative endeavour of six universities/polytechnics in Saxony. The female participants in the project are offered mentoring, workshops, and coaching sessions.

A summary of the papers, together with information on other research activities of the Centre may be found in a report on the Centre's homepage (www.uni-leipzig.de/~frages).
The Centre has about 45 members (a quarter of them male) of various nationality, belonging to a wide variety of disciplines: the cultural sciences, art history, history, philology, languages, music, sociology, psychology, economics and medicine. The research conducted by members of the Centre may be grouped under three main headings:

1. A number of topics relate to identity - e.g. artistic identity, identity of women writers, images of the body, physical self-view, gender roles.
2. A second group of research projects relates to gender differences. Are there differences between the sexes which are significant for everyday behaviour, employment prospects, family work?
3. A third set of topics is concerned with the fact that many aspects of gender relations have their roots in our culture.
4. Fourth, our research includes topics relating specifically to women, like psychosocial aspects of menopause or the stigmatizing of women in the history of medicine.