ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the agrarian politicians and the government help to secure for the long term rural employment for women by supporting equally all agricultural property rights and forms presently in existence in rural East Germany. In March 1993, an East German feminist politician and member of parliament representing the Linke Liste called upon the German Bundestag to debate the deteriorating situation of East German rural women after unification. The rural developments in eastern Germany leading to collectivization began after World War Two, when East Germany became the Sowjetische besetzte zone or Soviet occupied zone. The structural changes since World War Two in East Germany affected rural women profoundly differently from their counterparts engaged in simple commodity production on small family farms in West Germany. Since the collapse of the socialist rational redistributive economies, many rural people of Eastern Europe have become ambivalent about the politics of decollectivization.
