Feminism’s Effects in Germany « The Thinking Housewife

Feminism’s Effects in Germany

June 16, 2011

JESSE POWELL writes:

Germany has too many housewives! So says the EU. I’ve heard this argued in different ways before. The reality is, Germany has too few housewives.

Not only are the German people failing to replace themselves with historically low fertility rates, the pathologies of social decline — divorce, illegitimacy and cohabitation — are growing worse. Marriage is more unstable in the former East Germany than it was under Communism. In the country as a whole, more than 50 percent of marriages end in divorce and the fertility rate is 1.38 children. In 2009, the number of employed Eastern German women actually exceeded the number of employed men.

Last fall, not long before this latest admonition that Germany put its women to work, an article appeared in The New York Times hailing the accomplishments of women in the former Communist republic:

“Eastern women are more self-confident, better-educated and more mobile, recent studies show. They have children earlier and are more likely to work full time. More of them are happy with their looks and their sexuality, and fewer of them diet. If Western women earn 24 percent less than men, the pay gap in the East is a mere 6 percent (though overall levels of pay are lower),” The Times proclaimed.

But this “success” and the erosion of the once venerated “kinder, küche, kirche,” or “children, kitchen, church,” have brought bleak developments and instability for children and the women themselves. As this article on the social problems of Germany states:

“So called problem neighbourhoods (“Problemviertel”) exist in Germany. Examples are Gelsenkirchen-Bismarck, Köln-Kalk or the Ihme-Zentum in Hannover. Those neighbourhoods have a high high-school-drop-out rate and children growing up in a neighbourhood like this have only 1/7 of the probability of going to college compared to a person growing up in another neighbourhood. Abuse of alcohol and drugs is common.”

And on the issue of school violence, as described by teachers of the Rutli school in Berlin in 2006:

“We must realize that the mood in some classes currently is marked by aggressiveness, disrespect, and ignorance towards adults … The tendency toward violence against property is growing … In most of the families of our students, they are the only ones getting up in the morning. For them, school is a stage and battleground for attention. The worst culprits become role models.”

As I will show in the statistics below, the former East Germany is significantly worse off than West Germany in its family structure, but both East and West Germany are getting worse, not better, in terms of family well-being.

The chart below shows how out-of-wedlock births, the divorce rate, and the fertility rate have changed in Germany since 1960. The information on out-of-wedlock births is broken down showing the total for all of Germany and the difference between the ratio looking at West Germany and East Germany separately. In 2008 19.5% of all children born in Germany were born in East Germany, so overall East Germany makes up 1/5th of the total German population.

German Out-of-Wedlock Birth Ratio, Divorce Rate, and Total Fertility Rate

	Total	West Ger.	East Ger.	Div. Rate	Fer. Rate
1960	7.6%	6.3%	11.6%	10.7%	2.37
1970	7.2%	5.5%	13.3%	18.1%	2.03
1980	11.9%	7.6%	22.8%	28.4%	1.56
1990	15.3%	10.5%	35.0%	30.0%	1.45
2000	23.4%	18.6%	51.5%	46.4%	1.38
2008	32.1%	25.8%	57.7%	50.9%	1.38

The divorce rate in the former East Germany was once higher than in West Germany, but divorce in West Germany has grown at a faster rate since 1960. In 2008, the divorce rate in West Germany was higher than in the East. In 1960, the divorce rate for Western and Eastern Germany, respectively, was 9.4% and 14.6%. In 1985 this grew to 35.1% and 39.0%. In 2008 the rate was 52.0% for West Germany and 46.2% for East Germany.

Children born to non-German parents, with foreign nationality, are more likely to be born to married parents. The illegitimacy ratio of children with one or both parents German was 16.7% in 1995 and 33.2% in 2008. Among the children born in Germany with foreign nationality the illegitimacy ratio was 11.7% in 1995 and 27.8% in 2008. In 2008, 5.0% of children born in Germany had foreign nationality; for 90.6% of children, one or both parents were German.

Germany is made up of 16 Federal States. The state with the lowest out-of-wedlock ratio is Baden-Wurtemmberg, directly north of Switzerland. The statistics for illegitimacy and divorce are very close to each other comparing the German state of Baden-Wurtemmberg to the country of Switzerland. In Switzerland, in 2008, the illegitimacy ratio was 17.1% and the divorce rate was 47.2%. In the German state of Baden-Wurtemmberg, which borders Switzerland, in 2008, the illegitimacy ratio was 21.5% and the divorce rate was 46.9%. The German state with the highest illegitimacy ratio in 2008 was Saxony-Anhalt (Sachsen-Anhalt) at 64.0%. The illegitimacy ratio, by age of the mother, in 2008, was 91.5% for women who were exactly 18 years old, 73.0% at the age of 20, 40.0% at the age of 25, 25.6% at the age of 30, 21.9% at the age of 35, and 25.2% at the age of 40 (32.1% for all ages overall).

Overall, the fertility rates of Eastern and Western Germany have been similar in recent years. From 1975 to 1990, the fertility rate of the East was significantly higher than that of West Germany. From 1990 to 2008 the fertility rate of East Germany was lower than that of West Germany. The fertility rate of East Germany suffered a sharp decline after the collapse of Communism, falling to a low of 0.77 in 1994, but afterwards it recovered to slightly exceed the fertility rate of West Germany in 2008. In the year 2008, West Germany’s fertility rate was 1.37 while the rate for East Germany was 1.40. A total fertility rate of 2.10 is necessary to maintain a constant population, so Germany is far below a replacement fertility rate.

Since 1960 the difference in the proportion of German women working compared to German men has shrunk radically. In East Germany, looking at Social Security contributions as a measure of total employment for men and women in 2009, we see that the number of working women actually exceeded the number of working East German men (by a very small margin, the exact male to female ratio being 0.9969 to 1).

The table below looks at the Employment to Population Ratio of the 15 to 65 year old age group for Germany overall:

Employment to Population Ratio of the 15 to 65 age group in Germany

	Total	Men	Women	Diff.
1960	67.2%	90.3%	47.2%	43.1%
1970	65.8%	87.7%	45.9%	41.8%
1980	65.2%	82.5%	48.3%	34.2%
1990	66.3%	78.5%	53.8%	24.7%
2000	65.4%	72.8%	57.7%	15.1%
2009	70.2%	75.3%	65.1%	10.2%

The ratios below look at the number of German men working compared to the number of German women. The ratio is based on the number of men and women contributing to Social Security as a proxy for the number of men and women who are working.

Ratio of Male to Female workers in West and East Germany (according to Social Security contributions)

	West Ger.	East Ger.
1974	1.66	0.00
1992	1.40	1.14
2009	1.23	1.00

Finally, what is the family structure for German children?

The below table looks at the proportion of German children under 18 years old who are living with married parents, co-habiting parents, and single parents, comparing the situation in the former East Germany to West Germany. The two points in time that are being compared are April 1996 and March 2004.

Living arrangements of children under 18 years old, by relationship status of parents

	Married	Co-Hab	Single
Ger – April 1996	83.9%	4.2%	11.9%
Ger – March 2004	78.3%	6.6%	15.1%
W. Ger. – April 1996	86.1%	2.7%	11.1%
W. Ger. – March 2004	81.1%	4.9%	14.0%
E. Ger. – April 1996	74.9%	9.9%	15.2%
E. Ger. – March 2004	62.2%	16.2%	21.5%