The Centre for Gender and Diversity was established in 1998 at the University of Maastricht. The establishment of the Centre provided a structural and institutional basis for tuition and research in the field of Gender Studies at the University of Maastricht. The Centre is financed by the University as a whole but falls under the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

The Centre primarily focuses on being male or female as a formative social, cultural, economic and symbolic system. Being male or female as a social regulating principle is referred to as 'gender'. This term also implies that it is not only important to study the history, culture, socialization process and mode of being of women and the construction of femininity, but also that the construction of masculinity occupies a central place within Gender Studies. Processes of inclusion and exclusion and the way power operates in relation to gender, form our interdisciplinary object for study. Moreover, gender as a social regulating principle in our view is not disconnected from categories such as ethnicity, religion, nationality, class, age and sexuality, which exercise a similar social regulating quality. These various forms of diversity and hierarchy mutually influence each other. The Centre plays a role in all these fields and wherever they intersect. It does this principally by means of tuition, research and social service.