Conflicts and discrimination

Unfortunately, conflicts and discrimination as well as harassment also happens in academia. As a structured program for (post)doctoral researchers who are more likely to be affected by discrimination than performing discrimination and harassment the WGS want to support their members who have to face or witness such situations.

In order to achieve this, the WGS wants to create an open and trusting environment in which the (post)doctoral researchers can exchange and support each other. Furthermore, the coordinator of the WGS will always be available to the (post)doctoral researchers as a contact person and will discuss and support the further steps together with the person concerned.

In addition, the WGS offers various workshops to raise the awareness of the (post)doctoral researchers.

Furthermore, there are also contact persons and supportive offers from the university, which can be found on the following pages

Ombudspersons of the University of Duisburg-Essen

Gabriele Spengler(gabriele.spengler@uni-due.de) in Vertretung für Dr. Marina Metzmacher

Help and support in case of questions regarding psychological counselling

Website: http://www.uni-due.de/abz/studierende/psychologische-beratung.shtml

Help and support in case of questions regarding the inclusion of people with disabilities or chronic diseases

Website: http://www.uni-due.de/beratung-inklusion-behinderung/beratungsstelle.shtml

Central point of contact for support for scientists who are exposed to hostility and attacks in the context of their science communication

Website: https://scicomm-support.de/

Sexual discrimination and violence

To support (post)doctoral researchers have to face or witness situations in terms of sexual discrimination and violence on the one hand but also the awareness of supervisors and mentor several workshops by Dr. Sabine Blackmore and Heike Pantelmann are part of the offered WGS program.

If you faced a situation that you want to talk about you can always contact Dr. Vanessa Kramer or one of the persons listed below.

In the case of sexualized discrimination and violence, you can contact the following persons:

Website: https://www.uni-due.de/genderportal/service_agg_ansprechpersonen.shtml

These are:
the equal opportunity commissioner,
the decentralized equal opportunity officers in the faculties
the central ombuds office for students
the social contact persons at the University of Duisburg-Essen the staff councils
the representatives of the severely handicapped
the representatives of the General Students' Committee (AStA) the supervisors

Sexual discrimination and violence

Website: https://www.uni-due.de/genderportal/service_agg.shtml

Translation of the starting webpage

What is it?

Universities are generally regarded as places where people come together to learn and work and where sexualized violence and discrimination do not occur. Sexualized violence and discrimination at universities - as in other contexts - is hardly noticed, kept quiet, played down or considered irrelevant.

Sexualized violence and discrimination include, for example

- insinuating speech or degrading comments about people or their bodies
- derogatory remarks with sexual content
- indiscreet "questioning" about one's lifestyle
- distributing, hanging up or displaying images with sexist or pornographic content
- sexually degrading gestures and behaviors
- repeated and persistent staring
- unwanted touching and assaults
- unwanted physical proximity
- forcing sexual acts, sexual coercion, rape - solicitation of sexual acts

(Source: Förster, Franziska; Hoffmann, Jana; Schmiedgen, Janette; Zamzow, Lena: Sexist discrimination and sexual harassment - information and counter-strategies, Berlin, 2007: 6).

Particularly serious are cases of sexualized discrimination and violence based on the exploitation of dependency relationships, in which personal or professional disadvantages are threatened. Both women and men can be affected by this, but the majority of those affected are female. This is also confirmed by data from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in a study on violence against women published in 2014. Examples from everyday situations at universities can be found in the brochure "Sexualized Violence at Universities" (2009) by the University of Göttingen (p.:9.).