Maternal Employment

Pre-Unification

• Prior to the unification of Germany, attitudes towards maternal employment differed in the East from the West.  For example, East Germany expected and needed women to be paid workers and had several policies supporting maternal employment. Employment policies in the East that enabled women to combine employment with motherhood existed because of their socialist ideology that paid work is a right and duty for women.  In contrast to the East, West Germany relegated women to unpaid homemaking through a male breadwinner / female carer arrangement for their work family division of labor.  Employment policies in the West that primarily compensated women for leaving the labor market to become full time homemakers reveal their emphasis on women as mothers rather than employers. 

Reunified Germany

• The reunification of Germany has brought the former East and West closer in scale regarding their attitudes towards maternal employment; however differences still continue to exist.  By 2002 the former East had seen a comparatively reduced level of support for maternal employment, while the former West had seen a comparatively increased level of support for maternal employment. For example, from 1991-2002 West Germany’s family policy regime in its support of employed mothers have changed from low state support with medium parental leave, low day dare coverage and medium child benefits to comparatively increased support with medium parental leave, medium day care coverage, and medium child benefits Yet, while West Germany’s level of support for maternal employment has become more positive through reunification, they have not caught up with those of the East.  For example “despite a reduction between 1991 and 2000, the labor force participation rates of women in East Germany remain much higher (over 72%) than those in West Germany”. 
• The reasons for the decrease in East Germany’s level of support for maternal employment is that several employment policies set during the post-unification years have significantly undermined German women’s ability to combine employment and family.  Some components of these policies are “a 14-week, paid maternity leave with job protection, a paid 3-year childrearing leave period that can be taken by either parent with the provision to return to an equivalent job, the constitutional right of all children aged 3-6 to a place in child care but not for younger children not older ones, child-related tax exemptions that discourage family employment, and ‘income splitting’ which favors high-income single-earner families”.  The overall decrease in level of support for maternal employment in German is evident through contemporary German policy that reinforces the male breadwinner family by encouraging women to leave the labor force.   
  

References

Adler, Marina A. and April A. Brayfield. 2006. "Gender Regimes and Cultures of Care: Public Support for Maternal Employment in Germany and the United States." Haworth Press 39(3/4):229.

Adler, Marina A. and April Brayfield, 1996.  “East-West Differences in Attitudes about Employment and Family in Germany.”  The Sociological Quarterly 37(2):245-260.