Word: german
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Behind the explicit language, personal tone and sometimes infantile humor of these "new German girls" lies a set of concerns that is more visceral - if also more self-absorbed - than a previous generation's fight for equality and respect. "This generation of women dares to declare that there are other things in life than either career or children," says Christel Eckhart, a sociologist and professor of gender studies at Kassel University. This is not entirely new. Since the late 1990s, Berlin's vibrant musical underground has featured women who undermine gender clichés through in-your-face sexual behavior...
...real antagonism, however, lies elsewhere. Traditional feminists such as Alice Schwarzer, a pioneer of the German women's movement in the 1970s, have condemned the latest feminists for being interested only in "their personal affairs: that is, career and men." Yet many young women say that Schwarzer does not speak for them anymore. "We need a new feminism," says Elizabeth Raether, one of the authors of Neue Deutsche Mädchen. "The old feminism is influenced by the language, the rhetoric and the thinking of the '68 ers. It's a problem to get rid of them. They think because...
Some of the issues motivating younger German feminists are far from new. Eckhart says this is "a generation of women who are better educated than any other before them," but who still face structural disadvantages and discrimination. Today's thirtysomethings, she says, have grown up with a rhetoric of equality. "But when they enter the job rat race, they realize that this is not the reality." Jana Hensel, Raether's co-author, writes that when she started an internship at the weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel in 2003, she was shocked to find that there was only one woman among...
Eckhardt argues that the German workplace has "a lot of catching up to do" with European neighbors like France or Belgium on such issues as equal wages, promotion prospects and daycare. In 2006 German women earned 22% less than their male counterparts, according to Eurostat, making Germany's wage gap the widest in Europe after those of Slovakia and Cyprus. And the proportion of management positions held by women - 15% - remains below the European average...
...Alphagirls, "but that was all very theoretical." That ideological interlude is now over. Ursula von der Leyen, Family Minister in Angela Merkel's coalition government, has initiated reforms aimed at getting fathers to take parental leave, and expanding child-care services. With women's rights before a broader German public, Roche's book appeared at a good time. Now the question is whether her frank talk will advance gender equality or simply fade into a trivial cultural memory...