Women, work and family in the new Länder: Conflicts and experiences

Abstract

Drawing on published statistical accounts and personal testimony, the paper argues that east German women generally were disadvantaged after unification for reasons of lower pay, occupational status or non‐transferable qualifications, with motherhood the biggest employment disadvantage of all. Most at risk of unemployment have been single mothers, and households with children headed by a woman are in the lower income brackets. Their employment motivation unabated, east German women of all age groups have developed active strategies of combating unemployment through retraining, participation in employment creating schemes and, among younger women, by postponing childbirth. In the GDR, it was the woman who was expected to change her employment to accommodate family responsibility; in the risk society since unification, this individual resourcefulness and adaptability has become a crucial means of fighting labour market exclusion.