Key Topic: Gender and Diversity in Business and Society

Term: Summer 2018

Objective: The Key Topic "Gender and Diversity in Business and Society deals with gendered processes and structures of inequality on the corporate and societal level. Other dimensions of inequality such as ethnicity, age and social background are taken into consideration. Different approaches to economic inequality from business management, economics and sociology as well as equal opportunity actions and their effectivity and feasibility are discussed. Legal provisions such as the Equality Act in national and European law serve as an analytical framework. There are different measures that will be analyzed: professional training, gender equal work arrangements as part of concepts of work/life balance, the predicate "Total E-Quality", the audit "berufundfamilie®" and the "genderdax®". Theory-driven teaching and empirical and practice-oriented learning methods are used to enable students to identify discriminating structures and practices in companies as well as to develop specific solutions - e.g. by transferring equal opportunity measures to SMEs. Case study of small and medium-sized Berlin based enterprises are analyzed with regard to their current state of gender equality and diversity; students will work on suggestions of how to implement equality policies.

Syllabus: 
a) Gender and Diversity in Business
b) Economic Aspects of Gender and Diversity
c) Social Science Approaches and Findings on Gender and Diversity, Corporate Case Studies
d) Legal Aspects of Gender and Diversity

Teaching Methods: Discussions, Case Studies