East-West Women's Culture in Transition: Are East German Women the Losers of Reunification?

East-West Women's Culture in Transition: Are East German Women the Losers of Reunification?1 Hannelore Scholz The hunger strike of the KaU workers in Bischoff erode marked a turning point in the former German Democratic RepubUc (GDR).2 People started to speak up. They also began to protest when their fadories were sdieduled to be shut down (as in Suhl, Weimar, and Rostock). They formed organizations which even poUtidans joined. Women also partidpated in these movements. Since they represent the highest number of unemployed, this was not surprising. Obviously, too much is being demanded of the East Germans. More and more loudly, they have articulated their doubts about the process of structural change in East Germany, noting that they are bearing the brunt of German reunification. New East-West barriers have been ereded. Criticism of the Treuhandanstalt (national trust supervising the privatization of state-owned properties) and of the poUtical committees increases. The controversy about wages and rising unemployment testifies to the acute emergency situation of the East Germans. It is interesting to note that these problems are not conceived of as gender-specific. Among other things, the women of the new states (NBL) cannot fit into the "typical female jobs" in West Germany.3 They are exposed to a more sex-segregated labor market, but because of their East German socialization they have a lower range of job skills than East German men (and West Germans in general). Even those with adequate job qualifications find their skills partly devalued because of new conditions imposed by poUtical and labor-market trends. They are limited by prevailing conceptions of "female abiUties." Not even on the poUtical level are women's demands met; they were given too tittle consideration in the reunification process. This process was and is being taüored to male criteria; women occupy a marginal position in the current poUtical scene of the unified Germany. The social pressures of the present assimilation of East and West can be further noticed in the difficulties of communication between individual women and between women's movements. There are big differences among women in levels of seU-consdousness, in everyday culture, in behavior, and in plans for the future. Most East German women want to work, raise chüdren, and Uve in relationships just as they did before reunification. At the present time, however, they perceive their cultural devaluation as women to such a degree and in so many areas of their sodal life that they are highly skeptical, if not actuaUy pessimistic, about German © 1994 Journal of Women's History, Vol 5 No. 3 (Winter)_________________ 1994 International Trends: Hannelore Scholz 109 assimüation. This development expresses itself in a marked decrease of births as weU as the decrease in marriages since 1989. The marketing of the feminine through the sexual representation of girls and women in the media and the pubUc sphere represents a new phenomenon for the women of the new states that devalues their gender. This new phenomenon initiaUy produced annoyance and insecurity. It has become increasingly more obvious that it is the East German women who have to suffer the greatest disadvantage from this commodification of the female image. As a result, wül they be the biggest losers of reunification? Let me point to barriers between East and West and give some suggestions on how to overcome them. The fad is that after twenty years of the women's movement and three years of the pubUc one in East Germany the positive as weU as the negative results are strikingly similar. Women have not sufficiently realized the potential for poUtical, sodal, and cultural restructuring in the unified Germany. Why has the involvement of women in the unification process been so negUgible? Why is it so difficult to buüd poUtical SoUdarity among women? In order to formulate strategies of action or even solutions, motivations must be made known and an appropriate consdousness must be developed. I do not have a ready answer, but the questions that I ask can be answered from our interdisdpUnary research projeds.4 "East German women exemplified East Germany." This sentence I have heard many times in recent months. West German...