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Metalworker in the company: In hardly any other European country are there as few women working as in Germany.
Photo: K. Schmitt / photo booth / IMAGO
Once again typically Germany that the discussion about longer working hours and staff shortages has so far been conducted without the decisive population group: women.
Mothers in particular are less present on the labor market in Germany than almost anywhere else in Europe.
Many of them would like to work more, but cannot for various reasons.
This is the blind spot in the debate about overtime, which has so far been led primarily by middle-aged West German men.
Siegfried Russwurm, President of the Federal Association of Industry, made the start, calling for the general working week to be extended to 42 hours.
As expected, FDP leader Christian Lindner agreed, and former SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel recently took up the idea.
The boss of the employers' association Gesamtmetall, Stefan Wolf, also jumped up and called for the retirement age to be raised to 70 years.
It is well known that there is a shortage of workers.
When I walk through Berlin, I see the sign "Employee wanted" on almost every shop.
But if you just throw in a sound byte and say that we all have to work more and longer, you're making it too easy.
Demands like these are neither practical nor up-to-date.
They are also misogynistic and anti-family.
Because if everyone works more, who will take care of the children and the elderly?
More than 70 percent of under-threes in West Germany are looked after at home by their mothers, and four out of five people in need of care are cared for by relatives, mostly women.
Who is going to do it when everyone is working?
And what does that do to mental and physical health?
Have the gentlemen who are calling for more scoundrels for everyone already forgotten what we have collectively learned over the past two and a half years about the importance of housework and caring for the sick, the elderly and children?
When state care suddenly ceased - be it due to daycare and school closures or quarantines - it was mostly women who took on more care and support.
With drastic consequences for the labor market: According to the Hans Böckler Foundation, one in five women reduced their working hours in January 2022 (only five percent of fathers did so).
Women are therefore withdrawing from the labor market because of the double and triple burden.
This may also be a reason for the labor shortage, which needs to be investigated further.
Anyone who is now demanding more work without taking measures to improve the compatibility of work and family basically recommends a return to the traditional role model: dad earns the money, mom takes care of everything at home.
The disastrous financial consequences of the West German single-breadwinner model for women, especially if the marriage doesn't last, have been documented.
Anyone who still demands this makes themselves the mouthpiece of an anti-feminist backlash.
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SPD man Gabriel could know better, his second marriage is to Anke Stadler, a dentist from Magdeburg.
In eastern Germany, as in France, Sweden or Denmark, people knew better what was needed to make it easier to combine work and family life.
The GDR was not a feminist paradise and it is not about playing down the dictatorship.
It's all about the economic facts.
73 years ago, the East German state founders faced very similar problems as they do today: After the war, there was a lack of workers to build up the new state.
There was already a support program in the Soviet occupation zone that was supposed to bring women into the factories.
In 1960, a women's commission was set up at the Central Committee of the SED to deal with the compatibility of family and career and to plan the establishment of day-care centers with military precision.
A Jewish communist from Vienna, Eva Schmidt-Kolmer, set up the crèche system.
In the Federal Republic of Germany, a man named Franz-Josef Wuermeling headed the Ministry for Family Affairs from 1953 to 1962 and said sentences like: "There is no substitute for motherhood." to be allowed to accept.
Even Head of State Erich Honecker warned in 1971: "Without wanting to underestimate the growing involvement of men in the family - the main burden still lies with the woman." In 1976, a paid baby year was introduced for women - a precursor to parental leave.
Not everything went perfectly, mistakes were made.
The weekly crèche system had to be scaled back because the children did not develop well in it.
In the late 1980s, acclimatization was altered because of the increased exposure of early childhood psychologists to attachment theory.
GDR policy created greater economic independence for women and made it a matter of course for them to earn their own money.
To this day, East and West are still divided countries when it comes to female employment: while in the East 51 percent of mothers are back in work no later than 15 months after giving birth, in the West it is only 36 percent.
East German mothers start with an average of 16 hours per week, West German mothers with only 8.5 hours.
Shortly before the child's 18th birthday, West German women work 22 hours a week, while East German women achieve this when their child is about three years old.
All the figures come from the labor market expert Michael Behr, who worked for the University of Jena for a long time and is now employed in the Thuringian Ministry of Labour.
Behr also says that the income gap between West German mothers and their husbands is growing from year to year, and they are often left behind in terms of careers.
In the east, the gender pay gap of six percent is significantly lower than the national average of eighteen percent.
Women have caught up a lot in recent years, especially mothers with small children would like to work more, but it doesn't work because there is a lack of care.
In western Germany in particular, there is a lack of daycare and after-school care places.
A legal entitlement to all-day care will not exist until 2026.
There is a shortage of educators across the country.
The last to show ambition in expanding childcare places was the CDU politician Ursula von der Leyen, who headed the Ministry for Family Affairs from 2005 to 2009.
The Ministry is resting on its laurels to this day.
A new EU regulation came into force this Tuesday, granting working fathers in the EU ten days of vacation.
Germany only implements this later, because the German regulations supposedly go beyond that.
The Ministry of Family Affairs contradicts the coalition agreement of the traffic light, which strives for a 14-day release of both parents after the birth.
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Sabine Rennefanz
Finally, women and children: How crises challenge social justice
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And to be honest, 15 years ago the introduction of the paternity leave was revolutionary, but the numbers also show that the revolution failed.
Role models have not changed as much as one might have hoped.
The number of fathers who are willing to accept career cuts for their child, as many women do, is still very small.
After the birth of a child, 75 percent of fathers only take parental leave for the usual two months, which one has to apply for in order to receive the full amount of the parental allowance.
According to the Fathers’ Report 2021, the majority of fathers – around 60 percent – do not take parental leave at all.
Denmark has used the new EU regulation to introduce equal parental leave.
Why isn't that done in Germany too: Paid parental leave is only available if each partner takes four months, for example?
This does not solve the labor market problems completely, but it would prevent women from being as severely behind as they have been until now after the birth of a child and being disadvantaged as a result.