Project Details
Projekt
B.1.1 „Great motherly sensibility shall not be lost by acquiring good education.” The academization and professionalization of women
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Nicole Priesching
Subject Area
Roman Catholic Theology
Term
from 2020 to 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 410907407
Until the 1960s, “classical” women's professions and vocations were socially located by nuns, unmarried female teachers and parish assistants, all without academic education. In view of the substantial decline of nuns and the fast development of connections between theological-ecclesiastical vocational training and family life of women there were created new institutions of training and practices of education. The project wants to analyse new semantics of academic professionality of women and the emotional potential of a new conception of femininity and motherliness. It takes into account the women of the “Katholische Fachhochschule NRW” (KatHO NRW), founded 1971. With its sites in Aachen, Cologne, Münster and Paderborn the KatHO NRW was the main contributor to establish colleges (Fachhochschulen) for social work and social education in the 1970s and therefore to the academization and professionalization of women in social and pastoral professions.The aim of the project is to describe the meaning of being a catholic woman on the basis of conflicts reflecting the academization and professionalization of women in social professions. It is estimated that the 1970s had had a hinge function for this process. With the creation of Fachhochschulen job profiles and gender roles changed between men and women as well as between nuns and women of the laity. This should be analysed using the change of the discourse of motherliness and professionalization, in other words the change of semantics. This change and the dispute about it were effective ad intra into the catholic world, and ad extra for a specific contribution of the transformation of such role models in the society. Religious orientation can be created and modified by practices. The project is therefore also interested in the theory-practise-transfer in the context of the educational concept of the KatHO. Trends and changes in the organization of study and practical phases should be determined. The question is, if the students of the KatHO felt their role in the society as overstepping traditional spaces and how they correlated their social commitment with being catholic. Last but not least the project wants to examine the emotions in context with this process of the former students by conduct interviews with them. For this the central categories of interpretation of their own experiences should be analysed. The project wants also to show, how catholic women correlated their being catholic with gender identity.
DFG Programme
Research Units
