The concept of Diversity (Management) gets more and more attention in Germany since the General Equal Treatment Act came into force in 2006. Several corporations already use Diversity as an equal treatment strategy. Furthermore, some German universities recently began to focus on Diversity in addition or as an alternative solution to Gender Mainstreaming. Besides the analytic category Gender the concept Diversity considers more categories of social inequality, e.g. class, race, sexual orientation or disability. The feminist perspective criticizes Diversity because of a feared decrease in importance of the category Gender. Furthermore, critics suspect a strong economic character, meaning that the concept is used to integrate individuals optimally to increase productivity while the political background loses its significance. While Diversity is a more practical application to handle the summation of inequality categories, the opposing approach Intersectionality is a theoretical concept. Intersectionality wants to analyze the problems of social inequality and therefore concentrates on possible interdependencies of the different categories of inequality and their coherence with discrimination. In the paper I examine the relation of Intersectionality and Diversity. Due to the heterogeneity of Intersectionality I start with an overview of similarities and controversies. Different controversial views arise from the problem which categories of inequality should be regarded (e.g. only gender, race and class or also other categories) and from the question if there is a hierarchy between the categories or not. Based on this developed overview I will have a look at the concept Diversity in theory before I discuss selected cases of Diversity Management concepts at German universities. Which aspects of Intersectionality become part of the concept Diversity and its practical application and which do not? Which conclusions can be drawn for the current Diversity concepts at German universities?
