Five years after unification: East German women in transition

In the summer of 1995, five years after German unification, I interviewed 18 women living in the eastern part of Berlin about their lives in united Germany. In contrast to interviews with the same women 5 years earlier, these conversations revealed that the women were no longer reeling from the loss of identity, institutions, and state-supported benefits for women with children. However, while no one wanted a return to the former German Democratic Republic, attitudes toward life in the new Germany were not all positive. Some women valued above all else the new freedom to travel and the lack of state intrusion into their lives, and thus embraced united Germany. Others resented the inequalities resulting from the capitalist market economy, including unemployment and the loss of collegiality, and rejected unification. Because walls still exist in the heads of many Germans, it will take at least a generation to overcome stereotypical attitudes and achieve true unification. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd.