Germany), details the attacks being made against women's employment rights in the ex-German Democratic Republic.
BARBARA SCHULTZ
WE did not earn much under
L Erich (Honecker]. Thus 2.95 marks an hour." This was how a from woman
55 year old
Thüringen demanded a rise in her retirement benefit from 500 marks.
This is the result of 40 years of working life during which she had also raised two children.
The level of female employment in the former German Democratic
Republic was around 92%, but, as in the rest of industrialized Europe, women earned on average only two thirds as much as men.
This means that unemployment benefit and pensions are correspondingly lower.
In East as in West Germany, poverty is female.
Women solve unemployment problem
Moreover, it is quite clear that the aim of allowing women's level of participation in the labour market to fall to around
45% is to provide a solution to the unemployment problem.
This in any case is what the employers are openly saying. Since women, if they are without a job, are not for the most part unemployed, since they can always have the housework to get on with, at least until they have got over the strain of previous years, they will remain calm.
And then the mechanism already well- known in the West goes into action: no paid employment when childcare cannot be provided but no childcare for those who are not in paid employment.
This of course only applies for women's work. Thus the proportion of unemployed women is much higher than that of men; at the end of August 61% of the unemployed in East Germany were women, 48% in West Germany.
There are, however, far fewer opportunities for women provided on the retraining schemes. The collapse of the textile industry in East Germany has mainly hit women, but there is no re-training project to deal with this.
Since women, owing to the obvious
10 obstacles, are less mobile than men, they cannot commute so far.
For the same reasons, as well as owing to the nature of the job market there, women are also less likely to try to move to the
West.
The stories of East German women show that in the time of the GDR it was possible for women to have children without fully falling out of the labour process.
Threats against abortion rights
The right to abortion meant that women could largely determine the number of children they would have and when. The present attempts to make abortion a criminal offence and remove the right to abortion from the basic constitutional rights of women is also naturally part of the attempt to trim women for the market.
When they are needed by the labour market, provision for child care will be made, when they are to be thrown out of the labour market, then it is cut back; all this is justified by the corresponding ideology which explains to women that it is good or bad for them to look after the children.
Anyone who has followed West German policies long enough knows how this works.
That women in East
Germany are aware of the situation they are in is shown by the fact that when IG Metall (the engineering trade union hald its women's conference they could reach no agreement on the banning of night work. Women from East Germany vehemently defended their right to do shift and night work, since otherwise they would be made even less competitive on the labour market.
The fact that the West the East 221, and which do not imply any social security benefits, is a sign of the danger.
Such jobs are above all the preserve of women. An estimated 4 to 5 million jobs are unprotected in this way.
It is urgently necessary to support the demand of Heide Pfarr (Hesse's minister for women and social affairs) for a compulsory insurance scheme for these workers.
### Federal court finds discrimination
This is underlined by the federal labour court's judgement of October 1991 that found discrimination against women and awarded to a cleaning woman continued payment of 20% of wages in the case of illness for six weeks.
The low proportion of women in the federal parliament means that there is likely to be little pressure from this quarter. Finance minister Waigel has been able to postpone the undertaking that nursery places will be provided for all three to six year olds from 1993 to 1997.
Women in East Germany have already reacted with greater reluctance to have children; demands for sterilization are on the rise. At the same time women's groups are on the retreat.
When will women finally come together to defend themselves? *
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