Gender & Sexual Studies - Essay Example

All through Germany's history, women have been consistently considered inferior to males. The Germans even maintain a philosophy about the part women have to play in their culture. This is summed up in three short words: Kinder, Kuche, and Kirche, meaning children, kitchen, and church, respectively (Hagenbuch, 2004). A lot of Germans still cannot bring themselves to the view that women are able to work outside the confines of family and home, and their culture makes it really hard for women to do so. Impediments such as the lack of child-care facilities and stores remaining open only during the usual working hours also exist. Child care can be very expensive, and even for those who can afford it, it is hard to find it. Consequently, it is hard for many mothers to return to work after bearing a child as also for working women to shop. To compound matters, part-time jobs are almost non-existent.

Gender and Work in Germany: Pre and Post Unification

The division of Germany had major repercussions on gender equality, specifically in the matter of division of labor in both paid and unpaid work. In the case of East Germany, it needed and expected men as well as women to be paid workers, while in West Germany, the conservative welfare state typically consigned women to unpaid housewifery and men to breadwinning. Consequently, women of East Germany gained better equality in the labor market than women in West Germany. However, in spite of the East German government’s professed commitment to eliminate gender inequality altogether, employed women failed to attain full gender equality, particularly with regard to occupational integration, earnings, as well as the division of labor at home (Rosenfeld et al, 2001).

Institutional change and family formation

Institutional control over the course of life and the formation of the family remained high under the highly regulative, pro-natalist, and communist government in East Germany. The strong regulative nation was abruptly replaced by the establishment of the democratic West German model after a separation that lasted 28 years. After the downfall of the communist regime in East Germany, there was an intensification of economic pressures all over Germany, and more so in the tumult of changeover in East Germany, rather than in the pre-FRG.

East German women reacted to the economic confusion as well as insecurities of the process of transition with de-standardized family formation as also a high incidence of alternative family modes, which was in fact according to their secular familial values. A significant part of the East German story is the strong pattern under the extreme institutional control wielded by the communist system, compared to which the de-standardization after reunification remains in stark contrast (Fasang, 2011).

On the contrary, West Germany underwent a process of re-standardization of family formation. This comprises either traditional marriage as also motherhood patterns or an interruption of family formation. This schism is motivated by structural difficulties to merge a career as well as a family, tax concessions for the breadwinner of the family, and the never-changing conventional family values in West Germany. In the later stages of re-standardization, there is a high incidence of cohabitation, the resultant motherhood out of wedlock, as also divorce.

Women’s Fertility and employment decisions

In either part of Germany, the probability of women bearing a first child is correlated negatively, with employment as well as educational achievement. However, with second and third birth risks, the negative correlation flags. In East Germany, virtually every mother goes back to work 18 months after birth. However, in West Germany, this ratio is a lot smaller and when the child begins nursery school/school, women enter the labor market yet again in higher ratios. These factors indicate a powerful and strong influence of institutional conditions, in particular the degree of public day-care provision (Bredtmann et al, 2009).

World population policies

In advanced countries, constant sub-replacement fertility, aging, as also immigration remain the three significant issues of population policy, such as actual/impending population implosion and urban over-crowding. There are no effective policies in areas of immigration and sub-replacement fertility. Instead, they have social policies that have some inherent connections to demographic policies. “…population policy interventions in industrialized countries have been more indirect and implicit than direct and explicit” (May 2012).

Social change

Women remain the most significant players in social change. Women’s life courses have undergone dramatic change. In industrialized countries women’s employment rates have increased steadily as well as their educational attainments are raising their economic independence, fertility, and family behavior/models rapidly. With education, the motivation of young women to gain goals other than motherhood and family formation is also on the rise. However, equality has not kept up with the achievements in many fields, although some women have been able to do so. Also, women are at a higher risk of poverty in many nations, and gender differences in the causes, experience, and extent of deprivation are apparent. (Ruspini, 2002).

Liberal Berlin women

German women, especially from Berlin are exceedingly liberal. They have no qualms about showing pictures or imparting information about themselves in a manner that is most revealing and you can find these in many websites. To find such a Berlin woman anyone can visit the many websites in order to make contact with them if one is visiting Europe and is likely to sojourn in Berlin for any length of time (Master page).