Definitions | Diversity Roadmap

DIVERSITY

The term “diversity” implies respect for and awareness for the diversity in society, for example, in educational institutions, companies, governmental and civic bodies.

INCLUSION

Inclusion is chiefly understood to be a vision of society in which persons in all their diversity have unlimited opportunities for playing a role and participating in all areas of society.

ACCESSIBILITY

Acessibility allows everyone access to all places and services. This enables everyone to lead an independent and self-determined life. In addition to infrastructural measures, this also means adapting the language.

DISCRIMINATION

Discrimination denotes any form of discrimination or violence towards, or exploitation of, persons on the basis of characteristics attributed to their group (e.g. age, sexual orientation, gender, origin, religion, traveller way of life, disability). Discrimination is founded on structures of inequality rooted in society.

SEXISM

Sexism denotes any form of discrimination, violence or exploitation based on gender. Sexism is based on the concept of gender hierarchies and expectations of behaviour from a person or group of people on the basis of their sex, their gender or their sexual orientation.

RACISM

Racism denotes any form of discrimination, violence or structures which discriminate against persons on the basis of their real or attributed origin, the colour of their skin, their religion or their language.

SEX / GENDER

The distinction between sex (biological sex) and gender (social gender) comes from English. Human beings are born into different bodies (sex), but gender is primarily determined socially, not by biology. Gender is connected to roles and cultural traditions that are maintained through societal conventions. The gender / sex spectrum is highly diverse and in addition to categories of “man” and “woman”, there are also other genders such as “non-binary” and other sexes like “inter*”.

LGBTQIA+

Abbreviation for the words lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersexual, and asexual. The abbreviation denotes persons with sexual and / or romantic orientations and gender identities that are characterised by not corresponding to heteronormative or binary norms. The + stands for all diverse forms of sexuality and gender that are not listed explicitly.

PEOPLE OF COLOR

(abbr: PoC) is an expression originating in the USA. Since the civil rights movement, it has been used for people who are “not white”. It comes from an academic context and is a sociological term. It is an important tool for dealing with racism and has become popular in Europe. It should also be noted that violence towards foreigners and racism that people in Europe have undergone and continue to undergo is not always connected with external features (for example, people from the Balkans, Roma, Jews, Muslims or other religions, people with limited knowledge of languages, etc.).

TRANS AND CIS

Trans* (from Latin for “the other side”) denotes a person who feels their gender does not or does not only corre- spond with the gender they were assigned at birth, which was based on physical characteristics. The addition of a star after the noun (Trans*) shows the inclusion of various experiences and realities. Other terms for this are trans- gender or transidentity. The term “transsexual” is now outdated and is now avoided by many as gender identity has nothing to do with sexuality. The term cis person (from Latin for “this side”) refers to persons whose gender identity coincides with the gender identity they were assigned at birth.

INTER*

Inter* or intersex people are those whose physical characteristics (sex) do not permit them to be classified biologically according to the two-sex system. There are various manifestations of inter* people.

QUEER

Queer persons are those for whom heteronormativity and the binary system norms “get in the way”. Queer is an umbrella term for lesbians, gays, bisexual, trans, non-binary and/or asexual persons, and also includes those who seek to question and “disrupt” the two-gender binary system and heteronormativity politically and theoretically.