Family and Work - Women in Germany after Unification
Kirsten Kuptz
Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject Sociology - Gender Studies, grade: A, Johns Hopkins University, language: English, abstract: When in 1990 the two German states unified, the government of the FRG and the populationsof both states faced a great challenge. During forty years, the democratic West Germany andthe socialist East Germany had developed in opposite directions. The different legal,ideological, and economic systems were reflected in policies pursued by the governments.While individual lives in the East were substantially predetermined by the state, people in theWest had greater personal autonomy in shaping their lives.This was highly visible in respectto the relationship between two essential life spheres: family and work. Despite the generallyhigher level of modernization, in the FRG the traditional family form of male breadwinnerand female homemaker was prevailing and endorsed by the government. In the GDR, incontrast, policies focused on gender equality and the compatibility of employment and familyfor women.The process of unification, thus, meant a long and – initially underestimated – processof adaptation and accommodation. Speculations that women would turn out to be the losers ofthese developments soon proved right. They had to struggle in various domains: since thebreakdown of Eastern industry, unemployment was a permanent threat; previously universalchildcare centers and crèches closed in huge numbers; traditional gender roles and acompletely different value system predominated in the new society. For East German women,therefore, new opportunities such as freedom of speech and to travel were accompanied byunknown feelings of uncertainty, insecurity, and fear of their own and their children’s future.This paper seeks to provide insight in the effects of German unification on women, inparticular in the former GDR. The first section focuses on the circumstances, especially interms of employment and family, under which women lived in the two German states. Themajor part of the paper discusses women’s lives after unification. A closer look is taken atchanges in the spheres of work, fertility, marriage, housework, and at last women’s attitudestoward aspects of their ‘new lives’.
