East German Women Research Articles

East German Women and the Wende

East German Women and the Wende

Two Steps Back and One Step Forward: East German Women since the Fall of the Wall

Two Steps Back and One Step Forward: East German Women since the Fall of the Wall

Feminism in Crisis: The East German Women's Movement in the “New Europe”

Feminism in Crisis: The East German Women's Movement in the “New Europe”

Autonomy versus integration East German women's participation in political life under communist rule, during the transitional period and after

(1995). Autonomy versus integration East German women's participation in political life under communist rule, during the transitional period and after. Journal of Area Studies: Vol. 3, Women in Eastren and Western Europe ‐ in Transition and Recession, pp. 179-193.

East-West Women's Culture in Transition: Are East German Women the Losers of Reunification?

East-West Women's Culture in Transition: Are East German Women the Losers of Reunification?1 Hannelore Scholz The hunger strike of the KaU workers in Bischoff erode marked a turning point in the former German Democratic RepubUc (GDR).2 People started to speak up. They also began to protest when their fadories were sdieduled to be shut down (as in Suhl, Weimar, and Rostock). They formed organizations which even poUtidans joined. Women also partidpated in these movements. Since they represent the highest number of unemployed, this was not surprising. Obviously, too much is being demanded of the East Germans. More and more loudly, they have articulated their doubts about the process of structural change in East Germany, noting that they are bearing the brunt of German reunification. New East-West barriers have been ereded. Criticism of the Treuhandanstalt (national trust supervising the privatization of state-owned properties) and of the poUtical committees increases. The controversy about wages and rising unemployment testifies to the acute emergency situation of the East Germans. It is interesting to note that these problems are not conceived of as gender-specific. Among other things, the women of the new states (NBL) cannot fit into the "typical female jobs" in West Germany.3 They are exposed to a more sex-segregated labor market, but because of their East German socialization they have a lower range of job skills than East German men (and West Germans in general). Even those with adequate job qualifications find their skills partly devalued because of new conditions imposed by poUtical and labor-market trends. They are limited by prevailing conceptions of "female abiUties." Not even on the poUtical level are women's demands met; they were given too tittle consideration in the reunification process. This process was and is being taüored to male criteria; women occupy a marginal position in the current poUtical scene of the unified Germany. The social pressures of the present assimilation of East and West can be further noticed in the difficulties of communication between individual women and between women's movements. There are big differences among women in levels of seU-consdousness, in everyday culture, in behavior, and in plans for the future. Most East German women want to work, raise chüdren, and Uve in relationships just as they did before reunification. At the present time, however, they perceive their cultural devaluation as women to such a degree and in so many areas of their sodal life that they are highly skeptical, if not actuaUy pessimistic, about German © 1994 Journal of Women's History, Vol 5 No. 3 (Winter)_________________ 1994 International Trends: Hannelore Scholz 109 assimüation. This development expresses itself in a marked decrease of births as weU as the decrease in marriages since 1989. The marketing of the feminine through the sexual representation of girls and women in the media and the pubUc sphere represents a new phenomenon for the women of the new states that devalues their gender. This new phenomenon initiaUy produced annoyance and insecurity. It has become increasingly more obvious that it is the East German women who have to suffer the greatest disadvantage from this commodification of the female image. As a result, wül they be the biggest losers of reunification? Let me point to barriers between East and West and give some suggestions on how to overcome them. The fad is that after twenty years of the women's movement and three years of the pubUc one in East Germany the positive as weU as the negative results are strikingly similar. Women have not sufficiently realized the potential for poUtical, sodal, and cultural restructuring in the unified Germany. Why has the involvement of women in the unification process been so negUgible? Why is it so difficult to buüd poUtical SoUdarity among women? In order to formulate strategies of action or even solutions, motivations must be made known and an appropriate consdousness must be developed. I do not have a ready answer, but the questions that I ask can be answered from our interdisdpUnary research projeds.4 "East German women exemplified East Germany." This sentence I have heard many times in recent months. West German...

From State Socialism to Market Economy—Women's Employment in East Germany

The transformation from a centrally planned economy to a market economy involves a wide-ranging redistribution of paid employment, income, and individual opportunities. Men and women in the former East Germany (GDR)—who before reunification had equal roles of participation in paid labour—have been affected in different ways by the restructuring of the East German economy. Women are now more often unemployed, and for longer periods, and face greater difficulties in finding a job. In order to explain these differences between men and women, the authors investigate the economic, social, and political dimensions of the transformation process. The main argument is that economic and social disadvantages affecting East German women are not just related to the economic and political transformation as such. Rather, they are rooted in a traditional gender division of paid work in the former GDR which was reinforced by the paternalistic family and social policy developed by the East German state. At the same time, however, East German women's experiences of being fully integrated into employment, and enjoying greater economic independence, make it unlikely that they will easily accept the West German model of partial labour-market integration.

Women's Experiences 'Above' and 'Below': How East German Women Experience and Interpret their Situation after the Uninfication of the Two German States

For women in the former GDR, daily life has changed since the unification of the two German states. With the example of diary excerpts from the autumn of 1990, written by two women, both at that time in their early 50s and having worked full time all their lives, the question is explored how women from different social backgrounds experience the changes that have affected their daily lives, how they assess their past, approach their new living conditions, cope with the demands made of them and, with the aid of examples of the symbolic division of the sexes, interpret their - changed - roles in the new social arena.

Three Generations of East German Women: Four Decades of the GDR and After

According to the media in East and West Germany, East German women are the losers of the so-called Wende (turnaround) and the politics of German unification. The reasons for this are manifold: while women are two-thirds of the unemployed in East Germany, they represent only forty percent of those who were awarded extra training or short-time jobs by the state. They lost or will soon lose many social services and facilities such as daycare centers, the monthly day off for housework, paid days to care for ill children, special help for unmarried mothers, affirmative action to qualify for a career, etc. Women, especially those with younger children, were the first to be fired and are the last to be hired. This loss of social security goes beyond its economic aspects; there is a growing fear of women facing more and more violence, in the family and in the streets. But statements such as these are not sufficient to describe the

The situation of east German women in postunification Germany

East German women feared that they would lose many of their important rights and social provisions upon unification. Their fears were confirmed, and women's needs have been ignored in the policies of the new German Republic. Women are suffering more than men when it comes to unemployment: they are losing the childcare facilities they had had, and they are not benefitting fully from educational and retraining programmes. Furthermore, they are losing their presence in the political arena. The article concludes by stressing the necessity for all German women to work together if they do not want to find themselves pushed back into the kitchen, the church, and the nursery.

Makers and victims of unification: German women and the two Germanies

This article analyses the role played by women in the upheavals of 1989 in East Germany and the consequences for women of German unification. While East German women participated fully in the ‘October revolution,’ they have not reaped the benefits of political change. The economic consequences of unification as well are affecting women negatively; women from the former East Germany are clearly losing the rights that they used to enjoy.

Shock Therapy: GDR Women in Transition from a Socialist Welfare State to a Social Market Economy

Previous articleNext article No AccessForumShock Therapy: GDR Women in Transition from a Socialist Welfare State to a Social Market EconomyDorothy J. RosenbergDorothy J. Rosenberg Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 17, Number 1Autumn, 1991 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/494717 Views: 38Total views on this site Citations: 25Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1991 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Ermira Danaj Albanian Context, (Mar 2022): 41–73.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92092-0_3Ermira Danaj Introduction, (Mar 2022): 1–18.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92092-0_1Elizabeth Fox Child Money and Food Stamps: A comparative analysis of Mongolian welfare programmes in the Ger Districts of Ulaanbaatar, Zeitschrift für Sozialreform 66, no.44 (Feb 2021): 499–524.https://doi.org/10.1515/zsr-2020-0021Ermira Danaj ‘I am not a feminist but…’: women’s activism in post-1991 Albania, Gender, Place & Culture 25, no.77 (Jun 2018): 994–1009.https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1475345Pamela Fisher Women and employment in East Germany: the legacy of GDR equality, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law 32, no.44 (Dec 2010): 401–409.https://doi.org/10.1080/09649069.2010.539360Juliane Edler The Wages of Germanness: Working-Class Recomposition and (Racialized) National Identity After Unification, Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe 18, no.33 (Jan 2011): 313–339.https://doi.org/10.1080/0965156X.2010.533866Elizabeth Rudd Gendering unemployment in postsocialist Germany: ‘what I do is work, even if it's not paid’, Ethnos 71, no.22 (Jun 2006): 191–212.https://doi.org/10.1080/00141840600733686Regina-Maria Dackweiler Wohlfahrtsstaat: Institutionelle Regulierung und Transformation der Geschlechterverhältnisse, (Jan 2004): 450–460.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-99461-5_56Lynn Duggan East and West German Family Policy Compared: The Distribution of Childrearing Costs, Comparative Economic Studies 45, no.11 (Mar 2003): 63–86.https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.ces.8100002ELIZABETH C. 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