Gender and Diversity Issues as Challenges and Resources for Learning Organizations Draft

During the last decades gender and diversity have become a business case in many respects. Therefore, organisations have to learn not only to consider gender and diversity issues as hindrances or problems but as opportunities to develop new competences. Organisational learning in this sense means to become aware of gender and diversity issues by questioning the daily “doing gender” and “doing difference” in their organisational culture and routines and how to make sense of gender and diversity in a productive way. The objective of this paper is to highlight the main factors for gender and diversity related organizational learning and to put the focus on the structural and on the emotional aspects which organisations and ind ividuals have to face when dealing with these issues.