THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN DIVIDED GERMANY - ABOUT THE INFLUENCE OF THE SOCIAL-CONTEXT ON THE ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE ROLE OF WOMEN AND THE EMPLOYMENT OF WOMEN

One of the few areas in which the citizens of the former GDR assumed that there now defunct state was superior to its Western alternative system was the area of policies for women. The following contribution examines whether the so-called emancipatory head-start of the women of the GDR can be empirically proven. It shows that the attitudes of the East German population towards what is the desirable role of women in family, partnership and work only slightly deviates from that of the West German population. Concerning the assumed compatibility of motherhood and work and the active approval of the employment of women, there are, however, distinct differences between the two separate political cultures in Germany. These differences as well as the clearly diverging quotas for women's employment are due to the specific characteristics of the respective social, economic and political-cultural conditions of both contexts.