Exhibition examines fight for equality in divided Germany

Were women in communist East Germany (GDR) truly more emancipated than women in capitalist West Germany? Or is that merely a cliche that came about after German reunification in 1990?

Clara Marz believes there are no "universal answers" to that question. She has curated an exhibition called, "Women in Divided Germany," and has written a book with the same title.

Clara Marz is a media and cultural scientist. She has approached the topic of women in West Germany and the former East Germany as objectively as possible. However, in an interview with DW, she conceded that her perspective is not completely neutral. Why? Because: "I come from eastern Germany," she said.

Marz feels that the experiences of the women in her own family have shaped her. "I think that's how it is for many children — especially girls — who grow up with their mothers' and grandmothers' experiences," says Marz, who was born in the city of Rostock, and is now 29 years old.

Her own mother was a shift worker — it was normal for women in former East Germany to work. They were indispensable to its socialist "economy of scarcity." In West Germany, in contrast, many more women stayed at home, were housewives, until the 1980s.

Regression in the East, progress in the West

The exhibition shows that every one of East Germany's state-owned enterprises (VEB) had a day care center. In today's reunified Germany, reconciling work and family life is not a matter of course. Visiting "Women in a Divided Germany" helps sharpen people's awareness of current problems.

Marz says she was quite surprised by the different experiences of women in East and West Germany. She realized the extent of that when she got to know female students from the West while at university. "They had different familial relationships or role models: mothers stayed at home, kindergarten wasn't that common."

Marz feels that viewing East German women as having been more emancipated is inaccurate. For her, it is important to ask: what was considered "equal" in the first place? "In the GDR, equality was very much about professional careers and financial independence."

Marz stresses that in the West, the women's movement of the 1970s and '80s emerged under completely different conditions — there, feminism was a struggle: loud and excessive. "Of course, that didn't exist in the GDR." 

Missed opportunities during reunification

East German women were disappointed after reunification. The collapse of the socialist economy led to mass unemployment and a brain drain from the East. 

Issues that were seen as important achievements in the East — such as the GDR's liberal abortion law and nationwide child care — were simply abandoned. Marz believes that was a missed opportunity for a really united Germany.

Marz says that the gap between East and West has widened again in recent years. "The feeling is: We somehow don't understand the others, and we are also not truly understood," she says.

Marz hopes that the exhibition's photos, texts and videos will encourage people to "get into an active exchange and recognize contradictions — but above all, to listen. I think that's really important."

March 8: International Women's Day

The exhibition has so far received positive feedback. It was displayed in Thuringia and an adult education center in Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where a panel discussion attracted an audience of women from both the East and the West.

"It was a wonderful exchange," Marz recalls. She grew up in a united Germany and she feels that looking back together in such a manner can help build a bridge to the present.

"For women of my generation — those born after 1989 — the differences are barely perceptible," Marz writes in her book. Such a harmonization would not have occurred if the East German dictatorship had not ended, and German reunification had not happened.

Marz is worried about the most recent political and social developments in Germany. She points to the low proportion of women in the German parliament, which has barely increased since the end of the 1990s. It now stands at 32%. "In purely statistical terms, that's not equality," Marz says.

And gender inequality, she says, is irrespective of whether women were born in the East or the West, it is a problem in German society as a whole.

This article was originally written in German.

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