Equal Opportunities Work - Theories about Practice

two terms ate highlighted, including the asymmetrical, hierarchically
structured relationships between men and women or between what is
considered "feminine" and what is considered "masculine". In the latter case,
the feminine and the masculine are regarded as structures that can be borne by
both women and men, thus shifting the focus from the individual to the
structural level. Applying a gender perspective to equal opportunities work
means studying the relationships between power and sex in contexts such as
organizations. Below, the term gender perspective is used in that sense.
Let us now return to the two lines of argument about how a gender
perspective promotes research and raises its quality. There are two different
ways used of legitimatising gender research: one is that its research perspective
allows neglected areas to come to the fore, gives us new approaches, new
knowledge, etc. The other is that gender research promotes equal
opportunities.
It should be clear that these two ways of legitimatizing gender research must
not be confused. In the first case, what is being discussed is the significance of
gender research within science and scholarship, in the second case it is a
matter of one potential field of application of gender reseurch: using the
knowledge gained through it in equal opportunities work in practice. I hesitate
to claim, a priori, that gender research has an overall positive impact on
research quality. Of course it is a good thing when research expands to new
fields and new problem complexes. But what determines the quality of
research is, in my view, more the content of its hypotheses and arguments,
methods, empirical tools and analyses than its subject matter. This is as true of
gender research as of any other research discipline.
Is it appropriate to use equal opportunities to legitimatize gender research?
Is doing gender research also doing equal opportunities work? Above, it is
clear that gender research is legitimatised through equal opportunities work in
at least two ways: in that it contributes to equality of opportunity at
universities, and in that it provides a theoretical foundation for wellfunctioning
equal opportunities work.
The connection between promoting gender research and recruiting the
underrepresented sex is not a perfectly obvious one, and it is questionable how
much weight this argument can tolerate. Gender research may be seen as one
way of improving equality of opportunity, in that carrying out gender research
is one way of promoting greater equality in the research environment, and the
recruitment of more female research scholars. However, the extension of this
argument is based on the preconception that women should do their research
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