Brigitta Kreß

Brigitta Kreß (born July 15, 1952 in Berlin ) is a German social scientist and family sociologist who specializes in promoting equality measures for women and men in a business context.

Until 2001 she was part of the five-person team responsible for the scientific support for the implementation of gender mainstreaming in the federal government .

She currently teaches applied sociology and diversity at Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. Before that she had lectureships for the state equality laws at the Hessian University for Police and Administration.

Brigitta Kreß

Life

Education

Brigitta Kreß studied social education in Heidelberg and sociology in Frankfurt am Main , with a focus on gerontology and sexual medicine . At the beginning of the 1980s she worked as a science journalist for radio and print media on the topics of family and gender research as well as the modern socialization conditions of men in the industrial age and the European cultural area. In addition, she worked on a voluntary basis on the board of the Pro Familia advisory service in Frankfurt.

Company advancement of women

For the ERGO e. V. and the Frankfurt am Main women's department, she developed career advice for women. In 1993, in the one -year cooperation project between the State of Hesse and the Pfungstadt-based bakery manufacturer Wilhelm Weber GmbH (500 employees, now owned by Barilla ), she developed a women's advancement plan for the 100 female employees. Across all company hierarchy levels, she analyzed the women's workplaces with regard to their working hours, financial equality with male colleagues, opportunities for advancement, as well as physical and mental requirements. She created a catalog of measures with an adapted step-by-step and time plan and a “career path plan with a modular system”. “For the advancement of women in the company, it means that you have to work hard on realities in order to be successful. This means that it has to be tailored to the individual woman's workplace, her family background and exactly to the requirements of the company. This requires a qualified, external view of the internal situation. ”The aim of the women's advancement plan was also to set up a cooperation network for the joint promotion of childcare facilities, which the city of Pfungstadt , the regional churches and neighboring companies (e.g. Wella AG, Softwarehouse GmbH). With the help of their networking activities and moderation of the various organizational representations, a day-care center was set up and the entire project was approved and published with a company agreement. The women's advancement plan in this form was the first in Europe to be adopted with a company agreement. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions assessed the plan as “a detailed definition for access to jobs with the stipulation that gender segregation should be eliminated at all hierarchical levels and in all fields of activity, as well as measures to reconcile work and family, such as parental leave , and working time regulations that make it easier for fathers in managerial positions to take on family responsibilities, for example through job sharing or part-time work. "

Development approaches for company childcare

For the German Youth Institute e. V. , she worked from 1996 to 1999 as a research assistant in the federal project “Promotion of company childcare”. Ten locations and models of company support for childcare in East and West Germany were analyzed and their financial, educational and organizational concepts and procedures were documented and compared. The three-year project should contribute to making the qualitative interactions between family and work visible and calculable using the example of company support for childcare. This made the financial advantages for companies clear, which come into play with family- and women-friendly personnel structures, whereby the model project "Companies, trade unions and youth welfare organizations [encourages] to actively support a child and family-friendly time policy." In the project the focus was on childcare, not only mothers, but for the first time also fathers were involved in the redesign of the relationship between work and family: “Company childcare represents an interface between the worlds of parents and children. New time bridges can be created here too relieve the burden and offer fathers the opportunity to participate in the development of their children. ”The results of the project were documented in a book that, based on this, offers practical examples for use in medium-sized companies.

Business aspects of family-friendly measures

Brigitta Kreß pursued the topic “Costs and benefits of family-friendly measures for companies” by showing that the quantitative costs can be made qualitatively visible in order to ultimately determine the sustainability benefits for companies. For example, on behalf of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs , she created a brochure on the subject of “Childcare pays! - Tax tips for companies "in which the companies were calculated the tax advantages for setting up or participating in company childcare places.

Own consulting company

In 2000 she founded the consulting organization "balancing consult - compatibility of work and family". At the end of the 90s she took over the German management of the three-year EU project " Managing E-Quality " with balancing consult , which she had previously completed for the Frankfurt Institute for Women's Research . Together with educational institutions and companies from Austria (Gender Link, Salzburg), England (MBA - Training, Research, Development, London), and Hungary (Hungarian Ministry of Social Affairs, Budapest), a cross-border and cross-cultural seminar (gender training) for managers was set up Developed from the private sector, which can be used across the EU. The methods for raising managerial awareness and practical instructions were published in multilingual brochures. For the specialist conferences that took place with representatives from large companies and trade unions (including Lufthansa , Fraport AG , Deutsche Telekom , GEW , IG Metall ) in Vienna and Frankfurt (1999), the focus was on promoting active fatherhood, as this was a new one for companies requires family-friendly orientation. According to Brigitta Kreß, one of the tasks of MEQ seminars is "to achieve a reorientation of employers and employees ... because male self-esteem is based on professional success." Family-friendly companies were already playing in for Brigitta Kreß in the mid-1990s Relation to demographic development plays a role, because “the better the bridges between work and family…, the more women would decide to have a child. In Sweden, where 86% of mothers are employed, every woman has an average of 2 or 3 children, in Germany it is only 1.3. "

Implementation of gender mainstreaming in the federal government

Until 2001, she was a member of the five-person team of academic support for the implementation of gender mainstreaming in the federal government for three years . A “Handbook Gender Mainstreaming for the Federal Administration” was created, which is available to the management staff of all federal government departments in print form and on the intranet.

Interfaith work

In 2006 Brigitta Kreß advised the interreligious women’s initiative Sarah & Hagar in a goal-setting process financially supported by the Hessian Ministry of Social Affairs and subsequently became a Catholic member of the group. In the form of a brochure, the group of Jews, Christians and Muslims formulated socio-political guidelines on the topics of work, family and education, which were valid for women of all three Abrahamic religions, the Jewish, Christian and Islamic, and which will be further developed in public discourse should. The Sarah and Hagar Initiative “... is looking for a socio-political consensus between German women, Jewish, Christian and Muslim beliefs. In this way, it creates a common platform for action from which other social groups can enter into a democratic search movement: How can religious freedom and gender equality be realized? ”The group's public presentations, in which their own years of rapprochement are also the subject are always perceived by three representatives of these religions together. So "the renunciation of missionary work for the other was initially the biggest obstacle ... to enter into a normally conducted dialogue." In 2009, the Sarah and Hagar initiative received the association's Leonore Siegele Wenschkewitz Prize for funding Feminist theology in research and teaching V. awarded.

The Frankfurt Bible Society honored Brigitta Kreß's volunteer work in a special exhibition at the Bible House. Within the exhibition: "Incredibly feminine - MainBlick auf Frauen an Nile and Jordan", which was open from October 29 to May 31, 2008 in the Frankfurt Bible House, the Bible Society portrayed its work and its commitment.

Brigitta Kreß works as a consultant and coach on the following topics: family, political and company equality between women and men, intercultural and interreligious dialogues, as well as the development of diversity structures in companies. Brigitta Kreß lives in Frankfurt and has two grown sons.

plant

Gender as a principle of social order

As a German social science author and science journalist, Brigitta Kreß read German and American feminist literature from the perspective of both sexes in the late 1970s. “The characteristic of gender as a social ordering principle” (Carol Hagemann-White) was and is the subject of her research. In her publications she dealt with the effects of gender role specifications and their dissolution on male socialization and social structures. She took up the demands of the burgeoning American men's movement of the 1970s for the revival of the female parts in the male psyche and for individually flexible role models (Robert W. Connell) and contrasted them with the German social psychological phenomena in the change of gender roles. The first groups of men had also formed in Germany (Göttingen, Munich, Frankfurt) and Brigitta Kreß recorded the status of the movement and made forecasts with their help and with the means of empirical social research (narrative interviews, expert interviews). Specialist articles and radio broadcasts were created for Psychologie Heute and Deutschlandfunk .

Role behavior

In her first book publication in 1983 she devoted herself to the effects of male role obedience on the identity of men over a biographical span, as well as the generative transfer of male role pressure within the father-son relationship. Brigitta Kreß described the resulting social interactions with female role obedience and the resulting structures in the family and the world of work. Gender as a normative social structural element, as it is defined in gender research, was made visible in everyday relationships through interviews with five men of different origins and socialization and made available for discussion. What was previously considered to be biologically conditioned can now be worked out as a social role , a role that is flexible : “How broad the statistical extent of the“ moved ”men really is can only be guessed by looking at the big puzzle from many individual conversations put together into one big picture. What radical, positive changes it will result in our entire world if all these men know about each other and confirm each other is something we can only speculate about today. "

Male conceptions of fertility

In the focus of her second book, which she wrote on the subject of "Male Fertility" together with the journalist Bärbel Döhring , it was shown that the female and male parts, which are equally present in women and men with their individual characteristics, can dissolve the role constraints of both sexes if they could be made conscious and lived. It was based on the assumption that there could also be a deep psychological anchoring of reproductive ability for men, which relates to their fertility and ultimately also to the relationship with the child. Experts (e.g. andrologists) were interviewed and six men were interviewed who, through their generative and emotional experiences, had a special biographical reference to the subject of becoming a father. On the one hand, they described their own level of feeling towards the (born or unborn) child, and on the other hand, remembering and inner confrontation with their own father, which for them often took place in constant change. They were amazed that they were even asked about this topic. "The fact that male fertility has not even been an issue for science reflects two things. On the one hand, society does not seem to expect men to be able to say anything and, on the other hand, men have internalized this non-expectation so much, that she has become part of her self-image. "

Advisory institutions such as Pro Familia discussed this approach in their conceptions and the connection between vasectomy and the psychological involvement of men in reproduction was included in the discussions.

fatherhood

In 1989 she delivered a complete revision of The New Man with a clearer focus on fatherhood. She emphasized the expansion of the male personality through the ability to experience emotions when men approach and confront their fatherly psychosocial task. At the same time, she included the pedagogical aspect relating to the psychosocial development of children. “It seems that the men themselves are the beneficiaries of the reorientation. But children come in second place. Research results from Germany and the USA show how important the positive affection and the educational achievement of the fathers are for the children: Fathers and mothers therefore have biological and emotional life skills and they influence different aspects of child development, whereby the good interaction of the two is one is the perfect complement. "

Work-life balance

To make the results of social and gender research transparent in the everyday relationships of women and men and to regard them as a political element of social development plays a role for Brigitta Kreß, especially when it comes to the compatibility of work and family . To this day, the establishment of childcare places is often only considered one element of the advancement of women, because the compatibility problem is mainly attributed to the mothers. In this way she was able to work out that “the increasing number of part-time jobs is a measure that promotes families, but not necessarily one that promotes women. Even if women often express the desire for more part-time work, this often means nothing more than a double burden with no career opportunities and shows women back into the role of ' additional earners ' ”.

She sees similar contradictions in the specification of parental leave and parental allowance. According to Kreß, it is family-friendly “when parents can choose the times when they want to be responsible for the child themselves. However, since these times do not have to be divided equally - with full wages - this means that the woman, as the one who usually has the lower income, receives the lion's share of the child-raising period and can therefore only change the old distribution of roles little. Here too, what is thought to be family-friendly is not necessarily women-friendly ”.

Business concepts

In her other essays, she bundles psychological, social, political and economic components when considering practical options for company support for childcare. The expansion and support of these is not only seen as a corporate image improvement, but also as an indication of a change in attitudes with regard to the responsibility of companies for personnel policy developments and sustainability. However, only if the current cost-benefit calculation is positive: “Recently, another benefit aspect of the advancement of women has come to the fore through the experience of organizational developments in medium-sized and large companies. The advisory competence. Women have an extraordinarily high success rate here, because their relationship orientation benefits them. Empathy, willingness to adapt, being able to listen, being able to wait and be able to ask questions are communication skills that some male consultants first have to acquire in expensive training institutes. "

In her work with companies, Brigitta Kreß counters their clumsiness primarily with the collection of cost-benefit factors (tax savings, image and customer advice, personnel recruitment) but also with criticism: “Company-sponsored childcare and the achievements made to date in promoting women and families are all Arose under pressure and with long, tough negotiations by women and women’s politicians. ”Her criticism goes back again and again to the origins of men’s research, the results of which are still valid in the company and family according to Kreß. "The male cliché is an artificial product of the hegemonic (ruling) masculinity , as the male researcher Robert W. Connell thinks, and only serves to secure the strategic superiority and predominance of the patriarchy."

Gender mainstreaming

When the Federal Government fulfilled its obligation imposed by the UN and the EU to introduce the gender mainstreaming instrument in all political areas, i.e. in the administration of the 15 departments as well as the Federal Chancellery, Brigitta Kress was one of the 5 team members in the staff of the Scientific Support for the implementation of gender mainstreaming in the federal government. GM was decided as a universal guiding principle of administrative action, which was laid down in the Joint Rules of Procedure of the Ministries (GGO). Under the leadership of the Equal Opportunities Department of the BMFSFJ, Federal Ministry for Women, Seniors, Family and Youth, a ministerial steering group was set up at department head level with the help of the scientific support team and was given thematic advice. All ministries had the task of providing projects in one or more of their departments with the instrument of gender mainstreaming and of exchanging experiences and results in quarterly meetings under the direction of the State Secretary. According to this, GM should be taken into account as an equality instrument in all decisions. As the end product of almost 4 years of work, an internal manual for academic support for the federal administration was available in 2002 and the gender competence center was established as a knowledge transfer organization with a connection to the Humboldt University in Berlin.

Gender difference and equality

Brigitta Kreß is an active member of Total E-Quality e. V. Germany , an auditing and awarding association that evaluates the entrepreneurial commitment with regard to the promotion of equality and compatibility. As part of her advisory work for the equal opportunities department of the airport operator Fraport AG, she was able to develop standards for implementing the Total E Quality process in practical project work with the company's employees. This is about the establishment of a process-oriented system of internal structures (workshops, training courses, projects) that makes employees, especially managers, aware of the gender differences in the workplace and in families. This development can be tracked and controlled with the help of key figures. “Using the diversity of the people who work at an airport as a resource is only possible if the appropriate structural and control elements are effective. TEQ serves as such a control element. As with gender mainstreaming, everyone's view should be sharpened not only for possible discrimination, but also for the added value of equal opportunities. … The characteristic “gender” is the most important organizational principle. ”In October 2014, Brigitta Kreß received an award from the board of Total E-Quality eV Germany. On the occasion of the TEQ award ceremony in Dortmund, she was “named an expert for total e-quality in recognition of her special professional commitment”.

Men as educators

Brigitta Kreß (2006 and 2008) investigated the presence of more male educators in childcare for the Frankfurt “Advisory and Administrative Center for Working Parents” (BVZ), the self-image and external image of male educators in 120 care facilities in the Frankfurt area. The aim was to make the job of educator attractive to more men and to increase the rate from the current 17% to at least 30% in the next 5 years. The accompanying increase in the educational quality of the care is also welcomed by the teachers: “They consider it educationally helpful if there is a female and male view of the everyday events in the facilities. That means that the children are perceived and recognized in different ways, they are cared for with male and female care and support. ”The survey was included in the study by the Federal Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth.

Parental leave for fathers

In 2008, Brigitta Kreß made a documentary on the involvement of father initiatives in companies on behalf of Fraport AG, which shows the positive interactions on the one hand with regard to role flexibility within families and on the other hand between fathers as employees and their superiors. Brigitta Kreß shows that the company, according to the statements of the executives, also receives a personal and financial benefit if fathers accept the statutory offers for parental leave by returning to their workplace with an expansion of their social skills and using them.

Works

Fonts

• The new man - male self-fulfillment as a chance for survival . Causa Verlag, Munich 1983.
• Fear of procreation and lust for procreation - Conversations with men about fertility and fatherhood together with Bärbel Döhring, Luchterhand Verlag, Darmstadt 1996.
• What does the man want? - A new consciousness of masculinity , Heyne Verlag, Munich 1989.
• Entrepreneur responsibility for childcare Hessian Ministry for Youth, Family and Health (Ed.) Wiesbaden 1995.
• Operation and childcare - cooperation between youth welfare and business together with Ulrich Hagemann and Harald Seehausen, Leske and Budrich, Munich 1998.

As editor (selection)

• Brigitta Kreß, Annette Mehlhorn (Eds.): Caring for one another - religion, secularity and gender in the globalized world. Landsberg 2015, ISBN 978-3-7799-3252-9 .

Radio broadcasts

• The misery of masculinity - mother's son or father's son? DLF, March 5, 1982.
• The misery with masculinity - modern manhood rituals . DLF, March 12, 1982.
• The misery with masculinity - the liberation of man from man . DLF, March 19, 1982.
• Drink is male - risk of alcohol through male socialization experience . DLF, April 15, 1983.

literature

• D. Assig, A. Beck: Women are revolutionizing the world of work . Vahlen Verlag, Munich 1996.
• Gertraude Krell (Ed.): Equal opportunities through personnel policy . Wiesbaden 2008.

Web links

• Website of balancing consult

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Brigitta Kreß: Two steps forward - one step back? Documentation of the conference of the same name, October 8, 1994, DBG Hessen / IG Metall, Frankfurt am Main.
2. ↑ Cf. D. Assig, A. Beck: Women revolutionize the world of work . Women's advancement plan of Wilhelm Weber GmbH, Vahlen Verlag, Munich 1996, pp. 43–48.
3. ↑ Brian Bercussion, Anni Weiler: equal opportunities and collective bargaining in the European Union, Innovative agreements . European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, Luxembourg, 1999, p. 46.
4. ^ U. Hagemann, B. Kreß, H. Seehausen: KINDER ZEIT. 1/96.
5. ↑ Brigitta Kreß: Hessian women info of the Hessian Ministry for women, work and social order . No. 28, 1996.
6. ↑ Ulrich Hagemann, Brigitta Kreß, Harald Seehausen: Operation and child care - cooperation between youth welfare and business . Munich 1998.
7. ↑ Brigitta Kreß: Childcare is worth it! - Tax tips for companies (Ed.): Federal Ministry for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth. May 1997 (4th edition 1999).
8. ↑ balancing-consult.de
9. ↑ Managin E-Quality Manual
10. ↑ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 30, 1999. Business section: Fathers are disadvantaged in Germany.
11. ↑ The gentlemen do not have much idea - EU project teaches managers about “father support”. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. April 30, 1999.
12. ↑ Annette Mehlhorn : Impulses for a gender-equitable social policy based on Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions . Documentation by the Evangelical Press Service, January 2006.
13. ↑ The difficult process of rapprochement . In: New Post. Neu Isenburg July 5, 2008.
14. ↑ "She offers a training program for women, she helps couples plan children and careers together, and recently she has been advising men in traditional women's professions. Companies and institutions can also use it to find ways to achieve more equal opportunities in working life. Brigitta Kreß has dedicated her work to the compatibility of family and work. ... A basic theme of her work is to promote the potential of men and women regardless of gender and with equal opportunities. Often it is about overcoming traditional understanding of roles, that is, another "falling out of role". ... She describes herself as "critical Catholic" and is involved, for example. B. as a speaker in conferences on interreligious dialogue. ”In: Evangelisches Bibelwerk f. Hesse and Nassau. Frankfurter Bibelgesellschaft, edition 2/2007.
15. ↑ Brigitta Kreß: The new man - male self-fulfillment as a chance for survival . Causa Verlag, Munich 1983, p. 235.
16. ↑ Bärbel Döhring, Brigitta Kreß: procreation anxiety and procreation pleasure - conversations with men about fertility and fatherhood . Luchterhand Verlag, Darmstadt 1996, p. 127.
17. ↑ See, for example, Brigitta Kreß, Ulrich Schnürle: Biographical Aspects of Vasectomy In: PRO FAMILIA magazine. 1989.
18. ↑ In the foreword, Wilfried Wieck summarizes the position of feminist literature at the time: “There are no new men yet. Supposedly some who have become aware of what patriarchy has made of them: automatons, robots, zombies. Brigitta Kreß's book would be worth reading for them, but they don't read feminist literature. ”In: Brigitta Kreß What does the man want? A new awareness of masculinity . Munich 1989, p. 11.
19. ↑ Brigitta Kreß: Lust for responsibility - active partnership as a new quality of life In: Wir Frauen in NRW. 2/2002.
20. ↑ Brigitta Kreß: Promotion of women also promotes profit In: Psychologie heute. December 1996, p. 32.
21. ↑ Ibid.
22. ↑ Brigitta Kreß: Equal rights only in the year 2490? In: Psychology Today. October 1998, p. 24.
23. ↑ Dörte Ahrens, Brigitta Kreß: What it costs not to support women - company and institutional support for women in: Ulrich Hagemann, Brigitta Kreß, Harald Seehausen: Company support for child care - cooperation between youth welfare and business. Leske and Budrich Verlag, 1999, p. 110.
24. ↑ Brigitta Kreß: The conjuring of the fathers In: Psychologist Today. February 2002, p. 30.
25. ↑ Resolution of the General Assembly of the UN, 52/100, Art. 308ff., As well as Art. 2 u. 3 Paragraph 2 of the EC Treaty, Amsterdam Treaty v. May 1, 1999.
26. ↑ GGO of the Federal Republic of Germany, 2000, §2.
27. ↑ See www.genderkompetenz.info
28. ↑ Self-statement in the video, 0:15
29. ↑ Martina Rost, Brigitta Kreß: Practical example Fraport AG: Creating equal opportunities through Total E-Quality process management. In: Gertraude Krell (Ed.): Equal opportunities through personnel policy . Wiesbaden 2008, p. 142.
30. ↑ Brigitta Kreß: Men as educators In: Psychology today. November 2006, p. 65.
31. ↑ See male skilled workers in day-care centers. Berlin 2010.
32. ↑ Documentary: Even fathers take off! More courage to take parental leave. www.balancing-consult.de