ABSTRACT
Does family life determine work roles or do work roles determine family life? This question is at the heart of German social policies. A complex of labor laws, social assistance plans, and educational policies correspond to the perceived needs of the country. Embedded within this complex are a hierarchy of values, for example, protective labor legislation is essential to safeguard the childbearing capacities of women, a young child is best cared by a woman within the home, and a gender segregated workforce is appropriate if it facilitates society’s greater need for a stable population and superior child-rearing traditions. Why do women continue to shoulder an unfair burden of these policies? We contend, as did Mósesdóttir (2000):
The state adjusts the behavior of men and women to certain patterns/forms of gender relations by creating incentives/disincentives that are based on certain norms about men and women’s roles that are then supported by the appropriate institutional arrangements in the area of production or reproduction, (p. 194)
This chapter reviews family-work policies along with strategies to assess the status of working women. Where possible we highlight historical and contemporary East and West German differences. The German apprenticeship, based on a dual system of vocational education, is especially implicat-ed in this discussion since over two-thirds of each age-group takes part in this form of occupational education. Students spend 3 or 4 days a
week in the workplace and 1 or 2 days a week in their public vocational school. It is through the education system that the state prepares children for their adult work roles and retrains adults for the changing needs of the economy. Yet implicitly it also promotes gendered expectations about family roles and the hierarchy of state values.
