discrimination factor among many, which relativizes the meaning of gender policy. This overlooks the theoretical considerations of gender as a category, which have shown that gender is not only a personal characteristic but a constitutive factor in the structure of organizations and cultures(see Chapter 1). As a pattern for the genesis of social order, gender is woven into the very fabric of social relations. Government, organizational and cultural structures have an androcentric design(i.e. they are based on a specific form of masculinity). Androcentrism in social security systems, which is based on the fact that only paid labor is considered relevant, can not be seen as the discrimination of individual women. Nor is the relatively low pay and lack of professionalization in social and nursing occupations the discrimination of an individual woman on the basis of her biological sex. Rather, it is evidence of a gender structure with effects that include the wage gap between men and women. The gender-specific division of labor is also not a form of discrimination but a gender structure that allocates privileges and tasks according to biological sex. Gender policy is therefore more than anti-discrimination policy. Striving for gender equality, gender diversity or degendering(see Chapter 3) theoretical underpinnings, i.e. an understanding of what constitutes gender relations. An analysis of the determinants and conditions for discrimination based on gender is needed to define the framework for gender policy. The focus is not only on discrimination in the strict sense, which can be offset simply by acknowledging its existence. Instead, the structural causes of the apparent dissimilarity are analyzed and changed through political means. Gender mainstreaming as a strategy aimed at changing the societal conditions for the consolidation of hierarchical, dual and polar gender relations is part of a comprehensive gender policy. Anti-discrimination policy is the first step of such a policy. 4.2 Managing Diversity or Gender Mainstreaming? Diversity management is often portrayed as a more comprehensive and broader approach than gender mainstreaming, because it includes many more discrimination factors than gender mainstreaming(Döge 2004). Diversity means that differences among individuals should be acknowledged. Factors of diversity are defined as: biological sex, ethnicity, social origin, age, health status and sexual orientation. Thus, the approach is aimed at forms of domination that have a strong influence on social reality: patriarchal forms of authority that generate repression based on biological sex, racism, which discriminates on the basis of ethnicity, and capitalism, which determines class and socio-economic circumstances. On this basis, diversity seems like an idealistic objective which suggests that the aim is the abolishment of all forms of domination at once. It holds the promise of a veritable paradise: the equality of all humans. Management diversity as a company strategy promises to let individual diversity serve to benefit the company as a whole. There are two starting points form the company perspective: • anti-discrimination policies that are based on law; • the waste of resources that is caused by the repression of diversity. The goal of capitalistic enterprises is to sell their products as profitably as possible. The creation of diversity contributes to the attainment of this goal. At the same time, it solves two problems: The non-discrimination of individuals on the basis of certain 25