Gender Studies Prize

On April 26, 2024, the Gender Studies Prize for the year 2023 was awarded to our three laureates:

• Marie Wurscher, with a Bachelor’s thesis in the subject of Latin-American studies: "Collective Self-Organisation as an Empowerment-Strategy for Knowledge- and Space-Appropriation – An Investigation at the Intersection of Science and Activism through the Example of a Feminist Collective."
• Leah Petersen, with a Masters-Thesis in geography: "'There is no place like home' – The Dynamic between the Gender Identity of Young, Non-Binary Persons and their Childhood Home."
• Bianca Griech, with a Master’s thesis in cultural studies and Latin-American studies: "Dance as a Deconstructive Bodily Practice- Self-Perception and Bodily Experiences of Queer Tango-Dancers in Buenos Aires."

Marie Wurscher: "Collective Self-Organisation as an Empowerment-Strategy for Knowledge- and Space-Appropriation– An Investigation at the Intersection of Science and Activism through the Example of a Feminist Collective."

Knowledge (science), power, space and (feminist) activism: What is the relationship between them? How do they relate to community self-organization and empowerment? Using the example of the feminar collective, I will examine the potential of (student) self-organization for empowerment processes at the university and in urban spaces, and extract the group-specific practices for the appropriation of knowledge and space, as well as recourse to basic elements of empowerment processes - consciousness, liberation, healing and community.

The thesis’ theoretical onset is a power-critical understanding of empowerment from an intersectional perspective according to M. Kechaja and A. Foitzik. The concept of empowerment, as well as the word ‘power’ are highlighted in their ambiguity in the field of tension between experiences of discrimination and potential for resistance. A central element is the consideration of power as an ambivalent, multidimensional relation between regulating and repressive (violent) practice on the one hand, and productive, community-building power on the other, in which people are always placed in relationships with one another that are guided by interests. The dimensions of knowledge and space, understood as social practices, are both a prerequisite and realm for negotiation processes concerning the distribution of power and the resulting social relations. As a formative space of experience for the members of the researched group, the university is seen as a place where the dimensions of power, space and knowledge overlap, and where processes of (social) differentiation take place in the field of forces unfolding within it.

In pursuit of a feminist activist practice of responsible knowledge production, I use the qualitative-ethnographic method of documentary-reflective conversation analysis (documentary method) in combination with the survey method of open group discussion, which, like the entire research process, is oriented towards the principles of feminist activist ethnographic research - critical (self-) reflection and diffractive movement. With reference to the conceptualization of activisms as knowledge-generating practice and knowledge (science) criticism according to R. Icaza, R. Vázquez and X. Leyva Solano, the collective-specific understanding of the relationship between activism and science is examined. Based on Hannah Arendt's action-theoretical conceptualization of power as "enabling power", the collective self-organization between students can be described as a practice of empowerment.

In the course of the discussion, an ambivalent relationship between the collective and the university is documented, which unfolds between unavoidable connections and conscious demarcation. There is a certain incompatibility between academia and activism, but this does not negate the potential of activism as a practice of critical questioning and knowledge generation. The high relevance of the community element for (self-)organizing processes is documented at both the content and structural level of discourse organization.  It emphasizes how spaces and knowledge are (re)negotiated and created within the framework of collective self-organization and how this triggers a sense of agency. Appropriating things for oneself is described as a "feminist practice" of self-assertion that develops in the collective and can thus be interpreted as an affirmative answer to the initial question of the work about the potential of collective self-organization for processes of empowerment.

Leah Petersen: “'There is no place like home' – The Dynamic between the Gender Identity of Young, Non-Binary Persons and their Childhood Home."

Hate crime against queer people is on the rise around the world and violence against trans* people is higher than ever. The reasons for this development are manifold, but in a society based on a binary gender system, the mere existence of trans* people calls into question society's investment in the construction and maintenance of this gender binary.

Non-binary people in particular are practically invisible in almost all areas of society due to the binary gender conception and therefore experience discrimination on a daily basis. The aim of this master's thesis is to shed light on the dynamics between the gender identity of young, non-binary people and their living environment at home, as this "private" living environment has hardly been examined from a trans* perspective to date, although the nuclear family, with which young trans* people in particular share their living environment, is the most important institution for the reproduction of heteronormativity in our society. The underlying structural conditions of the interaction between gender identity and living environment are to be gender identity and living environment and the significance of this dynamic for the realities of non-binary people's lives will be revealed.

The results of this thesis illustrate the importance of the interaction between gender and space in general, but above all the relevance of the parental home for the construction of gender identity. It shows that social structures shape the social dynamics in the home environment and at the same time that this supposedly "private" sphere of the home environment itself acts as a decisive (re-) production unit of social power structures. For a profound understanding of the experiences that non-binary people have in all areas of our society, it is therefore essential to consider and understand both the dynamics between the social living environment in the parental home and gender identity as well as the underlying social structures of this interaction holistically.

Bianca Griech: "Dance as a Deconstructive Bodily Practice- Self-Perception and Bodily Experiences of Queer Tango-Dancers in Buenos Aires."

In the cultural practice of tango argentino, the semantics of an overlapping of hegemonic discourses become visible, which are characterized in particular by binary gender roles and heteronormative performance. In the context of the passionate and emotional encounters of tango, which are often permeated by erotic tensions, a discourse unfolds that conveys the heteronormative construction of dancing bodies. Starting from the consideration of tango as a movement practice, which is located in a symbolic-discursive field that creates the constitutional framework for bodies and their movements in dance, the present work examines the relationship between the discourse of gender difference and the physical-bodily experience of queer tango dancers against the background of queer theory and approaches of feminist phenomenology. The focus is on the question of how heteronormative structures that prevail in tango culture are deconstructed in the sense of queer subversion. The interest of this work lies in understanding how queer self-understanding manifests itself in tango, in which elements of tango performativity and the discursive constitution of gender roles are reflected and how queer tango dancers experience dance on a physical level in relation to this. Methodologically, my work is based on three months of field research in Buenos Aires. As part of this research, guided interviews were conducted with representative participants in the queer tango scene and observations were carried out at queer dance events.

The central finding is that queer tango creates a protected space for experimenting with gender identity and sexual orientation, and can simultaneously function as a means of intervening in hegemonic spaces. While the dancers move in a field of tension between the appreciation of tango culture and a critical attitude towards the heteronormative codes anchored in it, interventions such as role reversal and queer practices such as drag and cross-dressing can be recognized as subversive strategies that produce a fluidity of gender boundaries and the development of queer tango's own aesthetics. It also becomes clear that the discourse of gender difference is deeply inscribed in the dancers' bodies, although the bodily experience can be seen as a resource for queer subversion and resistance. The overall conclusion that can be drawn from the results of the thesis is that a deconstruction of the tango can only take place within existing structures. This does not happen through a complete dissolution of the roles, but through a playful approach to them, in particular through the change of roles, an active dialogue between the dancing bodies and the creative citation of vestimentary codes. In the sense of a deconstructive body practice, queer tango creates a counter-hegemonic space that can reveal the instability of heteronormative gender constellations and shed light on new narratives about tango.

On May 12, 2023, the Gender Studies Prize award ceremony was once again held in the former Fritz Café in the University main building. The laureates of the Gender Studies Prize for the year 2022 are: 

• Luis Kumpfmüller, with his Bachelor's thesis in the subjects of History and Philosophy: "The Male Alliance, the Self and the Other. External Attributions and Othering in Male Alliance Discourses around the Turn of the Century."
• Laila Riedmiller, with her master's thesis in political science: "Conceptions of Gender in Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories. Potentials and Limits of a Gender-Specific Analysis."
• Michaela Doutch, with her dissertation in Southeast Asian Studies: "Women Workers in the Garment Factories of Cambodia. A Feminist Labor Geography of Global (Re)production Networks."

Michaela Doutch: "Women Workers in the Garment Factories of Cambodia. A Feminist Labour Geography of Global (Re)production Networks".

For more than two decades, there have been discussions about how to sustainably improve the situation of garment workers in so-called low-wage countries in the Global South. The dominant answers to date are top-down approaches from the Global North, which attempt to determine and regulate from above the working conditions of mainly young women from rural areas. But what if we instead start with these garment workers and their agency on the ground? What if we start with these women and stay with them to explore their situations, their challenges and problems, and what new or alternative opportunities there might be for a transnational practice of solidarity from below in the global garment production network?

In my PhD research in Southeast Asian Studies, I started with (in)formal and (non-)unionized women workers in garment factories in Cambodia and stayed with them to explore how women workers are spatially embedded in the global garment production network, how they (re)act as subjects of (re)production in their everyday spaces, and how they can network and organize from below on a transnational scale to fight for their real needs and demands on the ground.

Theoretically, I developed a feminist labour geography perspective on global (re)production networks that systematically incorporates the gendered side of social reproduction processes into the analysis of labour and labour agency in globalized capitalist industries from the outset. I conceptualized labour not only as a significant spatial actor in global production processes, but also as a subject of (re)production that fights for more than “just” better working conditions and higher wages.
Methodologically, I followed a (facilitated) feminist (participatory) action research approach that places women workers in garment factories in Cambodia at the heart of the debate as key actors of change. Over six years, I worked with women workers in Cambodia to explore their life stories and everyday realities, their problems and challenges, and their possibilities for shaping and using spaces at local, national, and transnational scales. The transnational approach of linking workers with other workers along the chain – right at the next node of the production chain – to jointly develop transformative practices of solidarity from the bottom up has become a particular focus of interest and was pursued in practice together with workers in the garment sector of Cambodia. Bringing together female factory workers with male logistic workers (namely truck drivers) along the garment value chain represents “the action” of the research.

Central findings of this research were that, firstly, labour exists in a far more complex capitalist and therefore also spatial reality of highly interwoven places and spaces of (re)production. Women workers are thus not “simply” fighting for better working conditions and higher wages, but for their own reproduction and that of their families. Central issues are care work, education, health and pensions. Secondly, labour exists in a highly gendered landscape of (re)production processes, which has implications for the possibilities of labour (re)actions. Therefore, labour agency must be conceptualized as gendered, multiple-scalar processes in which social reproduction is not only a burden but also a potential. Thirdly, linking labour along the production chain via the “next-node approach” can become a methodological tool for (self-)networking and organizing labour in a more systematic, modular, and horizontally embedded way that enables workers to develop transformative practices from below, that build on the real needs and demands of workers – especially (in)formal and (non-)unionized women workers – on the ground and create opportunities not only to liberate labour from exploitative processes, but also to empower women and break up male-dominated formal labour processes.

Laila Riedmiller: "Conceptions of Gender in Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories. Potentials and Limits of a Gender-Specific Analysis".

This thesis analyses the „new right-wing“ agitation in relation to a „grand discourse“ about postulates gender roles within right-wing ideology. In pursuit of the analysis´, different publications (such as magazines and monographs published by the „new right-wing“  Institute for State Politics / IfS) will be examined. Special attention will be paid to the ideological and strategic use of gender conceptions in conspiracist narratives and how they are justified.

The thesis illustrates multiple blindspots in the scientific investigation of this phenomenon. For example, gender-specific analyses are still marginalised within political theory and studies of the political far right, and often delegated to gender studies, which can lack the polit-theoretical foundation to fully comprehend the strategic and ideological (ab)use of gendered narratives in context of right-wing conspiracies.  Since, up until now, scientific inquiry of gendered concepts in the „new right“ has been limited to public relations, publications within the network have been neglected, causing for certain strategies to remain obscure. Furthermore, current studies focus on individual groups within the broader movement, which overlooks the network’s ideological heterogeneity.

This thesis offers four central revelations, which can contribute to the eradication of these blindspots. It, for example, becomes apparent that binary conceptions of gender are essential in these discourses - through their potential for identification and justification of certain related actions, as well as their racist and antisemitic undertones and constant strategic re-evaluation. A historiographic contextualisation further demonstrates that „new right-wing“ anti-feminism originates from an intellectual canon, and it becomes clear that heterogenous gender conceptions are not the result of un-educated propaganda, but part of an intentional political strategy and the populist-fascist oscillation between anti-modern and counter-modern ideologies. Additionally, the necessity of increased interdisciplinary scientific approaches to the matter is stressed, and the urgency of this approach is evoked through the increased societal mobilisation against feminist, queer and gender-inclusive aspirations.

Luis Kumpfmüller: "The Male Alliance, the Self and the Other. External Attributions and Othering in Men's Alliance Discourses around the Turn of the Century".

This thesis argues that a widespread narrative in historical and literary studies should be examined more closely. In the past, male alliance theories have repeatedly been investigated from a  gender studies perspective. Their revelation of constructions of male identity as well as gendered stereotypes and power structures account for their suitability in this investigation. In the historiography of fin-de-siècle male alliance theories, they were often interpreted as an expression of threatened masculinity: "the man" fights "the woman" because he is afraid of her. Through a contextalisation with the concept of „Othering“, and an interdisciplinary analysis of key texts by Heinrich Schurtz and Hans Blüher, I demonstrate that the threatening quality of women is systematically propagated in order to legitimize the ostracisation of Jewish persons and women, and to simultaneously strengthen the man’s own social position. Finally, a comparison of two texts by the sociologist Georg Simmel and the political philosopher Carl Schmitt reveals possible strategies of dealing with „the Other": While, according to Schmitt, „the Other” appears threatening, and conflict with it is enforced to foster and secure one’s own identity, positive aspect, Simmel impartially and objectively highlights „the Other’s“ positive qualities.