Gender and diversity from a management perspective: Synonyms or complements?

Abstract

Because of challenges in organizational environments such as the increasing heterogeneity of the work force new management concepts are being developed. There are many contributions such as gender mainstreaming, women promotion, diversity management, multi-cultural communication, inter-cultural teams and the like focusing on different social categories of people. Many of these concepts are used synonymously, even though there are important differences. Thus the paper will present and compare human resource management models focusing on gender and diversity and highlight the similarities, analogies and differences. Furthermore the role of intersectionality in terms of the mutual construction of social categories will be emphasized and practical implications discussed.