Gender equality in Germany has been a topic getting debated about for around two centuries now. However, early feminist groups, activism and even WW1 and 2 where able to have huge impact on the German government’s perspective on women, leading to making things such as social, political and economic rights display differently throughout regions in Germany.
Social Rights
The social “roles” of women in Germany have changed over the last couple of decades, as women in the 18th century got considered subordinate to men, discriminated and restricted in many aspects. This rapidly kept changing over the following century as the first feminist association (General Association of German Women, “ADF”) started fighting for education rights and the role of women. Before women in Germany received suffrage in 1919 their traditional role was named “4 K’s”. The “4 K’s” stand for the 4 words starting with the letter “K” that men and the government considered the only roles of women: Kinder (children), Kirche (church), Küche (kitchen), Kleider (cloths/dresses).
In the middle to late stages of WW1 was the first time that the German government allowed women throughout Germany to participate in actions helping the well-being of their home country. The role of the German women was to help the wounded, retrieve dead soldiers, search for lost belongings and mainly – as men in the government stated – help in the “hard task” of cleaning Germany. Due to these task German women in WW1 got considered “Trümmerfrauen” (women of rubble). These actions had a positive influence as women started to get viewed as more capable, leading to the loosening of restrictions they had
After women in Germany obtained the right to vote in 1919 (right after WW1) the social role of women slowly started advancing towards equality and started undergoing major changes as in 1977 gender equality in a marriage was legalized and women started preforming roles at the same level that men previously performed, and even with little training women proved that they were as capable as men. Therefore, in the late 1970’s women stopped getting discriminated with the term “4 K’s”, but instead as professionally capable. German girls also received the right to secondary school education in the mid 19th century making bigger business roles for women possible.
Even though numerous things have changed over the last century, when it comes to the social rights of German women, still in the modern Germany (20th century and later) women still don’t have equal social rights to men. There are very strong regional differences in women’s social rights throughout Germany making it hard to generalize. In southern Germany in regions such as Bavaria the role of women is very conservative, meaning that even though they don’t get associated with the term “4 K’s” anymore it is still often expected for them to do the cleaning, take care of the kids and cook for the husband, while the husband goes to work. In East Germany the professional life of women majorly gets supported, whereas in west Germany the social equality between men and women is more or less balanced.
Political Rights
Otto Louise, the editor of the revolutionary “Women’s Newspaper” was the first upper-middle class women who fought for women suffrage in Germany. She started social movement for female education rights in Germany as early as in the mid 1840’s and 40 years later was contributing the 2 earliest feminist groups in Germany: the “ADF” and the “BDF” (late 1880’s).
The “ADF” and the “BDF” made it possible that by 1900 women in Germany were considered “legal persons”, as stated by the civil code. Throughout the next decade several women throughout Germany got inspired to fight for women suffrage in Germany and therefore until 1919 countless German suffragettes either joined or started their own feminist parties and took part in lobby activities.
At the end WW1 the German government was optimistic towards the contributions that women had to Germany during the war, and due to numerous German feminist parties taking part in activism towards suffrage since the 1850’s, German women obtained the right to vote in 1919, right after the end of WW1.
Women suffrage in Germany largely differed from women suffrage in other German speaking countries. For example, in Switzerland German women only obtained the right to vote in 1971 at federal level, which is 52 years after Germany.
Family law was a largely debated subject in Germany in the 19th century as until only recently women – by law – had a subordinate role in a relationship. Otto Louise even stated: “Marriage is the degradation of women, a strong German woman was virtuous, courageous, moralistic, patriotic and peaceable”. Due to the continuation of feminist activities towards family law adultery was not considered criminal anymore in 1969 and by 1977 divorce law got changed to “no fault” (no fault meaning that a divorce does not need to be justified by an action of either the husband or the wife) .
Economic Rights
The economic role of German women has been a debated topic for several decades, however it was not until the mid-stages of the 19th century that major subjects started changing. The “ADF” first focused on the education and professional life of women in Germany in 1865, however there activism was not successful. In the late 1970’s is when things started to rapidly change in the economic role of women; in east Germany the government encouraged to participate in labor force and over the next 3 decades more and more German women started to work for pay.
At the moment Germany is the one of the countries with the most part time working women (Only the Netherlands and Austria have more). This led to major issues for the economic rights of women. Due to the large number of part time working women large companies did not want women to take leadership roles, in fact Germany has less women in leadership roles than even Turkey, Malaysia, Nigeria, Indonesia and India. However, an even bigger issue is that since the pay gap in Germany got only slightly reduced to 21% in 2014 (EU average is 16%) a lot of feminist groups stopped taking part in activities to debate for women in leadership roles and kept on focusing on fighting for a reduced pay gap.
Despite the low number of women in leadership roles 96.4% of all German women have secondary education, 73% of German women are in labor force and the 37% of the German parliament is made up of women.
In 2011 the president of the European commission Jose Manuel Barroso said, “Germany, but also Austria and the Netherlands, should look at the example of the northern countries […] that means removing obstacles for women, older workers, foreigners and low-skilled job-seekers to get into the workforce”. This and the remaining social movement from the 19th century are currently still having impacts on the German governments decisions to eliminate the gap between men and women rights and get closer to equality.
2019-2-10-1549795461