The Tough Job of Being a Working Mother in Germany - Building Gender Balanced Business

• Germany may be led by the childless Chancellor Angela Merkel, routinely described as the most powerful woman in the world, but the country’s traditions have long limited options and opportunities outside the home for mothers.

• The country has a below-average labour participation rate among mothers for OECD countries, and those women who work are more likely to work part-time than in almost any other OECD or EU country. Fewer than 1 in 3 women with a child under 3 years old work.

• While 37% of eastern German pre-schoolers attend state childcare, only 3% of their western counterparts do (or, in most cases, can).

• Another impediment is schools: For nearly 250 years, most schools have closed at lunchtime, a tradition that the International Herald Tribune notes “has powerfully sustained the housewife/mother image of German lore and was long credited with producing well-bred, well-read burghers.”

• At last, that system is eroding, with about a fifth of Germany’s 40,000 schools offering afternoon programs in a change since 2003 that increasingly allows mothers to work, even full-time.

• Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen, whose efforts to bring more gender balance to child-rearing have been attacked by some, told the IHT: “This is a taboo we just can’t afford anymore; the country needs women to be able to both work and have children.”

• Germany needs the change to regain its economic footing. In the recent financial crisis, only 10,000 of the 230,000 Germans who lost their jobs were women.

• It also needs the change to push population growth: only 2 in 3 German women in their mid-40s live with children — with Austria, the lowest proportion in Europe.

The International Herald Tribune report

An IHT profile of Ursula von der Leyen