Current Research Projects
BMBF funded subproject: "Cleaning as Care Work (CoCare)"
"Cleaning as Care Work" is a subproject under the umbrella of the “Corona and Care — Care Dynamics in the Pandemic” (CoCare) research collaborative, in cooperation with the University of Tübingen (consortium leader: Prof. Dr. R. Ammicht-Quinn).
Care - as both a concrete work performance and an interpersonal relationship arrangement — has, even before the pandemic, been a politically and socially problematic, often precarious, little visible and thus crisis-ridden area. During the pandemic, a "crisis within the crisis" emerged, that is the pre-existing care crisis within the crisis of the pandemic. The project Co-Care utilises this "crisis within the crisis" as a starting point to analyse the tension between the overload, precariousness and invisibility as well as the society-sustaining significance of care.
Cleaning represents one of the sectors which, while classified as "systemically relevant" and thus deemed central to the so-called critical infrastructure, continued to remain barely visible during the pandemic. Like many other systemically relevant fields of work, cleaning represents a feminized, precarious, socially unappreciated field. Simultaneously, cleaning is a heterogeneous field: working conditions, working hours and formal safeguards vary greatly depending on the respective place of employment. Further, cleaning is rarely perceived or understood as care work at all. In private households, it is assigned less to care work than to (more technical, object-related) household work; in public spaces, cleaning is considered a pure, professional service without interpersonal relevance.
The overall goal of Co-Care is to identify new ways and means to increase the visibility of care as well as care-givers and care-receivers acting in these contexts and to strengthen them permanently. For this purpose, the significance, demand and resources of care dynamics for the post-pandemic society - which may again enter a (new) crisis - are to be elaborated and concretised for different fields of practice by means of case studies on cleaning and socio-pedagogical family assistance.
Co-Care thus addresses the urgent need for research that delivers insights into the destabilisation of care arrangements during the Corona pandemic, the needs but also resources that can be discovered in this context, and how care dynamics can be (re)stabilised for everyday life, to ensure that in further crises, the areas of care can function not as a “crisis within the crisis”, but above all as a resource within the crisis.
The project is planned as a sub-project in the project collaborative "Verbundvorhaben Corona und Care - Fürsorgedynamiken in der Pandemie", in cooperation with the University of Tübingen, Prof. Dr. R. Ammicht-Quinn.
Start: February 2023
Subproject leader: Prof. Dr. Paula-Irene Villa Braslavsky
Team: Ali Simon, M.A.
Consortium leader: Prof. Dr. R. Ammicht-Quinn
BMBF funded project digiMINT
The project generates scientific findings on the representation of women in the fields of
mathematics, information technology, natural sciences and technology (STEM), especially in mechanical and plant engineering. Using a methodological mix of qualitative, problem-centered interviews with female high school students and STEM students as well as quantitative online surveys with companies from the mechanical and plant engineering sector, a comprehensive and multi-perspective picture of the framework conditions of STEM fields of study and work that enable or hinder the recruitment, networking and initiative of STEM women is being generated.
On this basis and in systematic cooperation with actors from scientific, pedagogical, political and industrial practice, sustainable strategies for increasing the proportion of women in STEM will be developed in the form of target group-oriented, gender-appropriate recommendations for action.
Questions to which the project aims to provide answers include:
Where is the DropOut: Why do below-average numbers of female graduates from engineering core subjects and computer science find their way into mechanical and plant engineering? At what point in the path and how do they get lost?
How do female engineers specifically decide on respective specific courses of study, different companies and industries in the age of advancing digitalization?
What opportunities do digitalization and other disruptive topics (e.g., new work) present for the mechanical and plant engineering industry to attract more female engineers?
What role does (company) training play in talent retention and management? Contrary to common assumptions, these have the potential to reduce churn and thus create individual career stability.
The results of the digiMINT project will be used to develop target-group-oriented action guidelines in order to make a sustainable contribution to increasing the proportion of women in STEM courses of study and to promote academic career entry and the attainment of top positions in STEM companies and enterprises by women. Recommendations will therefore be developed to address barriers to attracting women to STEM fields of study and work.
The results of the project will also be made available to the interested public, the scientific community and the political and business communities in appropriate target group-oriented publications. The project and its (partial) results will also be presented and published at academic conferences and in scientific journals.
The quantitative and qualitative data collected in the project will be archived and made available for further analyses and questions, including those of other (external) researchers (secondary use - scientific use).
Start: October 2022
Project leader: PD Dr. habil. Yves Jeanrenaud
Team: Dipl.-Soz. Anna Wimmer