In the fields of cultural transformations and organisational change management, training is one of the most rapidly expanding methods of promoting social justice and organisational change. Since the implementation of equality and antidiscrimination policies like gender mainstreaming strategy or diversity management in the EU, many political and administrative institutions in Germany hire ‘diversity/gender experts’ to give ‘diversity/gender training’. This training aims to support workers - often at the highest levels (top-down principle) – to integrate equality aspects into their daily work. Such training involves the transfer of knowledge of equality and antidiscrimination strategies (e.g., laws, regulations and stereotypes) and tools in connection with different organisation cultures and   various backgrounds of people.

Despite a boom in diversity and gender training and the constitution of a new market of equality-oriented training and consultations, there is very little systematic research on goals, concepts, and content of this training. In addition to pedagogical dimensions – like didactic or teaching methods – the theoretical base of gender, diversity, culture and justice – understood as social categorisations – are not reflected.

The paper outlines some core findings of my Phd-project that will be published in spring 2010. The purpose of this paper is to explore different concepts of gender and diversity training and to reveal attitudes of trainers and types of professional strategies they use in their work. By interviewing practitioners with qualitative expert interviews and analysing the discourse of intersectionality the study reconstructs specific conditions and knowledge formations of trainings. Theoretically based on poststructural theory, the transformative potential of diversity and gender training for a broader social transformation of inequalities is revealed.

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