Professorships with a full or partial denomination in gender studies repeatedly spark debate — in the media, online, and in science policy. They are often compared to professorships in established single disciplines, creating the impression of an overfunded and constantly growing field. A closer look at the actual numbers, and at the assessment of the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), tells a different story.

An Interdisciplinary Field, Not a Single Discipline

Gender studies is not a stand-alone discipline like Slavic studies or paleontology, but a multi- and interdisciplinary field of research that addresses questions of gender and gender relations across a wide range of disciplines. Professorships with a corresponding denomination are accordingly spread across more than 30 academic fields — most often as a partial denomination within an established discipline, and less frequently as a stand-alone full denomination.

Structurally Still Weakly Anchored

The vast majority of these professorships fall into the lower salary brackets (junior professorships, W2 professorships), and a significant share are fixed-term. In its 2023 recommendations, the Wissenschaftsrat explicitly points out that gender studies still lacks reliable institutional structures — and specifically recommends expanding professorships with a denomination in gender studies, particularly in fields where the topic is currently barely represented, such as the technical, natural, and engineering sciences, as well as medicine.

A Consistently Small Share

The share of professorships with a partial or full denomination in gender studies, relative to the total number of professorships in Germany, has remained unchanged at around 0.4 to 0.5 percent since the year 2000. Rather than a growing field, the numbers point to a structurally small area of research — one whose institutional support the Wissenschaftsrat explicitly considers to have significant room for growth.

Source: Wissenschaftsrat (2023): Empfehlungen zur Weiterentwicklung der Geschlechterforschung in Deutschland; Köln. https://doi.org/10.57674/9z3k-1y81