German mothers lose out on full-time jobs
Some 80% of part-time jobs in the country are held by women as firms fight for workers
For many German mothers, a full-time job is becoming a thing of the past. That’s the evidence from a study that takes in the span of the country’s recent history, and reveals the split in family policies between the former Communist east and West Germany.
In the former, a tradition of full-time working mothers has been eroded to conform with dominant practices in the West. And women everywhere now are increasingly staying in parttime employment after childbirth, and not as a stepping stone to later full-time jobs, according to the recent paper published in Feminist Economics by Nadiya Kelle, Julia Simonson and Laura Romeu Gordo.
The country’s reunification in 1990 ushered in a period of convergence under which the former East Germany received the West’s policies wholesale — including those on taxes, transfers and family.
For West German women, the flexibility of part-time jobs is what enabled many of them to work in the first place. But in East Germany, the shift follows a culture of strong female involvement in the workforce that the former socialist government considered crucial for women’s emancipation. The problem with spending prolonged periods in part-time positions, the authors explain, is that they are often concentrated in low-paid sectors that offer only muted pension contributions, wage growth or prospects of career-advancement training.
Childcare not enough
And while childcare is increasingly available for working mothers, it isn’t usually enough to cover a full working day. “This one-and-a-half model is staying and becoming even stronger,” Romeu Gordo said in a phone interview. Balancing the division of working hours within the same household “would be good for women and for men — it would be good for the economy.”
Germany actually has Europe’s lowest share of families in which both parents work full-time, after the Netherlands. Some 80 per cent of parttime jobs in Germany are held by women, according to the Federal Labour Agency.
Romeu Gordo says offering incentives similar to those in Sweden, where both parents are encouraged to proportionally reduce their hours, may not only change perceptions but ultimately also help companies to attract talent — “especially in Germany where the labour market is booming and they have to fight for good workers.”