“We should apply the gender lens”

Protocol: Luca Rhese-Knauf

Carmen Birkle: When I look back over my own life, it is clear how feminist research has evolved in recent decades. I did my PhD and qualified as a professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and worked there in the Women’s Research working group. Set up in 1990, it was something of a novelty at the time. The way research has shifted can be seen from the fact that we later renamed it the Working Group on Women’s and Gender Research.

Helena Hanneder: The binary way of thinking is gradually becoming less entrenched. What kind of things did you focus on back then?

Carmen Birkle: Mostly on the visibility of ­women. We also assumed that, ultimately, everyone is somehow the same. Nowadays people hardly ever talk in those terms, as it is felt that there is no such thing as sameness. We now use words like difference and intersectionality. And the introduction of the concept of gender has led to important dis­ciplines such as masculinity studies.

“Language can change society, but language is also an expression of society. It plays an important role in feminist research.”

Professor Carmen Birkle

Helena Hanneder: The same trend can be seen at the student level. One of the first times I encountered feminist research was at a seminar on Global LGBT Fiction. Rather than starting out with classic works of feminist literature, it plunged straight into contemporary novels about trans identities, gay men, lesbian women or the AIDS/HIV crisis. Feminist research has also become much more interdiscip­linary. I am doing my PhD in linguistics; the ­methods used in my field lend themselves very well to gender research. We can look at large chunks of text and examine how the use of certain words, such as “dyke” – a derogatory term for “lesbian” – has changed over time.

Carmen Birkle: Language can change so­ciety, but language is also an expression of society. It plays an important role in feminist research.

Helena Hanneder: And in their turn, gender and feminist research also play an important role in ­other disciplines. One can take a gender-specific view of any area, for example of medicine and ­women’s health. Far too little research has been done in these areas to date. That is what I value so much at the Centre for Gender Studies and Femin­ist Futurology: we adopt a wider perspective that ­includes many different subjects. Consequently, the Centre has considerable impact on various ­institutions, brings researchers from different fields ­together and generates synergistic effects.

Carmen Birkle: And it is very important in this context to look ahead to the future. Discourse used to revolve around men and women, which role they have and how we can achieve greater equality. These days matters of diversity play a major role. That’s the future. It is about the LGBTQIA+ groups, and other additions to them – which is of course a really controversial topic.

Helena Hanneder: Diversity is already an established issue in social discourse, in popular culture and in institutions. And yet in some cases we are still waiting for structural changes within society. As far as research is concerned, it wouldn’t do us any harm to apply the gender lens a bit more ­often. This is what we do at the Centre, which is what makes it such an important institution. It’s true that a lot is happening, but it would be nice if even more could happen. However, this would ­require more staff, more resources and more jobs.

Carmen Birkle: Yes, that’s certainly true. After all, our goal is for gender-specific research to become the norm. For years, people would say: ­women in research – that will happen automatically. But nothing really happens automatically and feminist studies are just as important as ever. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was claimed that everything had already been achieved in Germany and Western nations. That’s not the case at all, though. It remains crucially important to bring about equality on all levels. In this context, I would also like to touch on the term post-feminism, which one hears a lot but is defined in very different ways. “Post” can mean “after” femin­ism. And it can mean “continuing” feminist ideas. I believe it would be wrong to say that “post” means “after feminism”, as feminism still exists. And it ­continues to be necessary. —

Carmen Birkle, a professor of North American literature and cultural studies who specialises in American, gender and ethnic studies, is the director of the Centre for Gender Studies and Feminist Futurology (ZGS). She is a DAAD alumna and received funding during a stay in France in 1983/1984. Helena Hanneder, a research assistant at the ZGS, is doing a PhD in English Linguistics at the University of Marburg.

The Centre for Gender Studies and Feminist Futurology at the University of Marburg devotes itself to researching, teaching and disseminating feminist and gender studies with a particular focus on futurology.