Diversity and antidiscrimination

The Diversity Charter is an employers’ initiative to promote diversity in companies and institutions, under the patronage of Dr Angela Merkel.

The European Commission is coordinating the Charter initiatives throughout Europe.

The President of Kempten University of Applied Sciences, Professor Hauke, signed the Diversity Charter certificate in May 2020,

signifying the organisation’s voluntary commitment to actively encourage diversity and esteem.

The wording of the signed certificate can be found here in PDF format.

Diversity management pursues the aim of creating discrimination-free structures and a discrimination-free work environment in organisations, companies and public authorities and institutions.

It encompasses all the measures that an organisation undertakes to positively shape a diverse community within it and harness the diverse potential.

Diversity management is a resource-centric approach that focuses on the similarities and differences between the members of an organisation. This creates conditions in which different people, their characters and potential can find a place for personal development.

At a university of applied sciences such as Kempten, this approach is essential for offering students and staff esteem and encouragement.

Diversity

Every person embodies diversity. We can map this diversity in core dimensions, particularly age, physical and mental ability, ethnic and cultural background, gender, sexual orientation, and religion or beliefs. These human characteristics are protected by the General Equal Treatment Act. Another factor that is increasingly viewed as a core dimensions is “social background”, as this is also a major source of unequal treatment.

These core dimensions cannot be changed. The external dimensions that also contribute to human diversity are changeable, although not to the same degree for everyone.

You can inspect the dimensions of diversity here in this diagram (PDF).

Intersectionality

Intersectionality describes the combination of aspects of someone’s identity that produces their dimensions of diversity, which are interlinked and differ from one person to the next.

People experience recognition or rejection based on these multiple affiliations. Discrimination rarely relates to just one aspect of these dimensions, but stems from their intersections with other dimensions of diversity.  This makes it important to consider the overall context of discrimination in order to identify the power structures that feed it.

For example, the subject of “combining family and career” includes the dimensions gender, sexual orientation, family status and parenthood. Each of these dimensions influences how a person’s life circumstances can be experienced and carved out. If ethnic background and impairment is added to the mix, the reality of that person’s life is different yet again.

The Office for Equal Opportunities, Family Affairs and Diversity contributes to the following bodies:

Kempten University of Applied Sciences is a member of the International Lake Constance University of Applied Sciences (IBH). As part of the working group on Gender & Diversity, the Office for Equal Opportunities, Family Affairs and Diversity is involved in developing the kinds of research and studying conditions that promote diverse real-life conditions among members of the university.

At national level, we participate in the Federal Conference of Commissioners for Women and Equal Opportunities (Bundeskonferenz der Frauen- und Gleichstellungsbeauftragten an Hochschulen e.V. – bukof). The aim of bukof is to create, promote and continuously develop an environment that is critical towards and free of discrimination for all students and staff at universities of applied science.

At regional level, we collaborate within the State Conference of Commissioners for Women and Equal Opportunities at Bavarian Universities of Applied Sciences (LaKoF) on continuously improving the conditions for women’s careers, in particular, and achieving a discrimination-free environment at these institutions for all students and staff.

In May 2020, we started working with Arbeiterkind.de . Arbeiterkind.de aims to support young people who aspire to become the first members of their family to study throughout this endeavour. This includes forming networks among students to help “newcomers” benefit from other students’ experience.

We will be posting more information during the months ahead.

Gender-appropriate language forms the basis for fair communications. Implicitly including people, but not referring to them specifically, ostracises them and often doesn’t reflect reality. For this reason, the use of gender-appropriate language is an important means of promoting the equal status of all genders.

The university is very serious about its aim of preventing sexualised violence of any kind (sexualised defamation, harassment, assaults, etc.) on campus and taking appropriate acting in any such case to restore individuals’ sense of security.

The “ Guideline for dealing with sexualised discrimination, harassment and violence” is a key document addressing the protection ofstudents.

Another key document when it comes to protecting employees against any kind of discrimination is the General Equal Treatment Act (“AGG”),

which can be found here.

The guideline will follow shortly.

Kempten University of Applied Sciences has various points of contact that you can turn to if you have suffered discrimination.

An overview of sources of support at the university can be found here in PDF format.

There are various points of contact in Kempten that you can turn to if you have suffered discrimination.

You can also seek support throughout Bavaria or nationwide if you require.

You can find an overview of sources of support in Kempten, the local region and nationwide here in PDF format.

You can observe certain procedures to help you feel safe from attack in public areas and particularly on campus. You can find information hereon how to feel safer on campus.

Who’s Who?

Each month, the Office for Equal Opportunities, Family Affairs and Diversity posts the profile of a protagonist of human rights.

Check Instagram (starting autumn 2020) and Facebook to find out more about the person we’re highlighting each month.

You can also access the entire 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights from 1948 here in PDF format.

What’s the right thing to say?!

Here you can find a list of the key terms that regularly crop up on the subject of diversity, together with their definitions. It’s a useful resource if you’re not quite sure how to say things.

A PDF of the list can be found here.

We are currently working on our recommendations for creating low-threshold and diversity-aware teaching material and documents. We will be posting them here soon.

Here are some useful links to informative articles, documents and videos that shed light on the topic of diversity.

Your rights at a glance

What does all this have to do with me?

Introduction to gender and diversity-aware teaching