EAST-GERMAN WOMEN AND THE WENDE

East German women's enthusiastic response to the political changes in autumn 1989 made many of them flock to the Independent Women's Association hoping to promote anti-patriarchial reforms. The paper draws attention to the broad range of academic, sociocultural, health and legal aid projects of great value to the community that women engage in, despite inadequate or any renumeration. Also various commercially successful ventures have been established by individual women or women's teams. East German women have so far resisted all pressures to be sent back to the hearth. Although the German women's movement is at very low ebb, most of the women activists of 1989-90 are still carrying on their struggle against the general backlash in many differnt ways, individually break the deadlock and regain its previous power.