NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/6548

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Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!ukma!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!rich
From: [e-mail] (Rich Winkel)
Subject: LIFE IS MUCH WORSE FOR EX-GDR WOMEN AFTER UNIFICATION
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/** headlines: 259.0 **/
** Topic: AGL:LIFE WORSE FOR WOMEN IN EX-GDR **
** Written 11:45 am  Sep 14, 1992 by newsdesk in cdp:headlines **
From: News Desk <newsdesk>
Subject: AGL:LIFE WORSE FOR WOMEN IN EX-GDR

/* Written  2:05 pm  Sep 12, 1992 by christic in cdp:glasnost.news */
/* ---------- "AGL:LIFE WORSE FOR WOMEN IN EX-GDR" ---------- */
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LIFE IS MUCH WORSE FOR EX-GDR WOMEN AFTER UNIFICATION

A recent poll by the Allensbach Institute says that 81 percent of
women who live in the former German Democratic Republic believe
the ``situation of women in eastern Germany has deteriorated
since unification.''

Before the GDR was absorbed by West Germany in 1990, most East
German women were needed by the economy. Now unemployment rates
are high for both men and women. The social benefits that allowed
working women to combine family and career--including affordable
day care and a full year of parental leave at full pay--have been
abolished by the new system.

``With unemployment rates in the east still soaring, women make
up two-thirds of the jobless but only half of the population,''
the Washington Post reported on Sept. 9. ``Day-care costs--which
were only a symbolic 35 cents a day under the communist
government--are rising dramatically, and other support systems
for working mothers are disappearing.''

The bleak outlook for families in the former GDR has taken a toll
on the birth rate in the new eastern states, the Post reported.
``Birth rates have plummeted 40 percent in the past year and are
likely to decline even more this year as women become more unsure
about their future and decide against having children.''

Birgit Druse, a 34-year-old mother of two young children who
worked 13 years as a bank teller before losing her job, told the
Post that in the former GDR ``women were very self-supportive and
financially independent.''

But no more. In the old GDR, state policy tried to help women
reconcile careers with family responsibilities. During the ``baby
year,'' new mothers could care for a child at home at full pay,
with their place on the job guaranteed when they returned to
work. After Erich Honecker fell from power in 1989, the reform
socialist government that briefly ruled the GDR proposed
liberalization of the law to allow either the father or mother to
choose the ``baby year'' option. Instead, the entire social
program was swept away by unification.

Other social benefits for the family included universal day care
for the children of working parents, a liberal leave policy that
allowed parents to care for sick children and the monthly paid
``Haushaltstag''--household day--for shopping, cleaning and other
family chores.

``As a result of a supportive government system, 95 percent of
East German women worked, double the percentage in the western
part of the formerly divided country,'' the Post reported. ``The
state needed the contribution of women in the work force to
offset a drastic labor shortage.''

Although the GDR's abortion law was one of the most liberal in
Europe, economic necessity did not force single women to
terminate their pregnancies. In July the Berliner Zeitung
reported that nearly one-third of the 192,000 families in the
eastern wards of Berlin were headed by single parents--mostly
women.

In 1990 most GDR women supported unification. ``Only now are
women realizing how male-dominated the western society actually
is,'' German psychologist Joerg Richter told the Post. ``This is
a tremendous shock for them.''

``The Allensbach poll shows wide differences in the experiences
of women who lived on opposite sides of the heavily fortified
border,'' the Post said. ``An average East German woman married
early and had more children at a younger age but always worked;
West German women, on the other hand, often worked first, married
later, had fewer children and typically did not go back to a
full-time career.''

Petra Falkenberg, a single mother of a nine-year-old girl, said
that single working mothers faced no social or economic pressures
in the old GDR. ``I used to collect a lot of respect for being
single and working and being a mother,'' she said. Now, she told
the Post, she feels completely drained by her new life. ``Now I
feel that a lot of people think they have to pity me. . . .''

The Post described a seminar for unemployed East German women who
``retained a self-confidence from their careers . . . [and]
proudly recited their decades of job experience.''

``I was economically better off'' in the GDR, an unemployed 56-
year-old salesperson told the Post. ``Things I could afford
before . . . I can't anymore.''

However, Renata Koecher of the Allensbach Institute insisted that
the majority of eastern German women ``feel they have profited
enormously from unity with better possibilities, more freedom,
growing incomes.''

But Regine Hildebrandt, minister for social affairs for the
eastern German state of Brandenburg, said that ``[m]any women
have not yet realized how much their situation has worsened, and
I am afraid of what will happen to them when they do.

``We need to fight the situation in the east with all possible
measures, or else the psychological damage will be permanent.''

[Story summarized by Andrew Lang.]
** End of text from cdp:headlines **