The challenge of being a woman in today’s Germany

In the last 50 years, women's lives have changed dramatically. But the oppression has remained; it is just structured differently today. The German and European legal basis seems to underpin the establishment of the equality of men and women demanded by the women's movements. But behind the picture of changed social and economic hierarchies, old patterns emerge: For example, women receive less money on average than men for comparable work and take on a large part of challenges in a working place where they have seen as a minority.

Same job, same work experience – and yet women earn less in Germany

In 2017, men earned an average hourly wage of 21 euros, while women earned just 16 euros. That’s a whopping 21 percent less – a figure that has remained relatively constant for years[i]. This also results in long-term problems such as lower pensions or major financial disadvantages in divorce.

But why do men actually earn so much more than women? Women more often work in lower-paid professions, for example, in social services, while men often work as engineers or computer scientists – the stereotype is actually confirmed. Almost half of the employed women work part-time. Because of the usually longer parental leave and part-time work, women often get the short end of the stick when it comes to promotions. In general, the proportion of women in management, supervisory boards, and other leadership positions are smaller than that of men.

An astonishing gender gap in savings

There is hardly any other country where people save more than Germany. And in hardly any other country is savings behavior as unequal as it is here. Forty percent of the population has virtually no savings worth mentioning – which means no significant private provision or protection either. Little known is that women, in particular, have significantly fewer savings than men, even though women have a much higher savings rate, i.e., they put more of their monthly disposable income away. In some cases, this has dramatic consequences: Because it means a higher risk of poverty, lower social participation, and even harmful health effects.

The causes are hardly women’s responsibility or free choice, but rather systematic discrimination against and disadvantage for women. The figures are sobering: women have an average savings rate of 14 percent[ii], while men save only ten percent of their monthly income. At the same time, men have more than twice the median net wealth of women. Women are particularly prevalent among the 40 percent of people in Germany who have virtually no savings.

Women’s quota at German universities: The flaws in the system

Although the number of female professors in Germany has increased, they earn up to 650 euros less per month than their colleagues. And that’s not the only problem facing women in academia. Even though no young woman today can imagine being disadvantaged at a university because she is a woman, some faculty members say there is still prejudice against women in academia among some older male faculty. “There are still men who can’t imagine that women are as good as they are,” Nor do some men believe that women want to “play the game” or keep up as much as they do[iii]. In Germany, habilitation is still essential for obtaining a university professorship. The lack of female professors is probably not related to the compatibility of family and career. There is also a technical barrier for women who do not have children. Women’s scientific achievements tend to be scrutinized more than men’s. If a woman has reached an appointment committee, she often has to fight the prejudice that she is just a “woman [iv].” Women who have reached the top have a certain tendency to take a particularly critical look at the qualifications of their gender colleagues.

Retirement: Women receive less than 800 euros on average in West Germany

The pension gap between women and men, the so-called “gender pension gap,” is a worldwide, serious phenomenon. In Europe, for example, the difference averaged 25 percent. Women in Germany usually earn less than men during their working lives even so they has the same job, same work experience – and yet women earn less in Germany. The same then also applies in old age, i.e., when it comes to pensions. In Germany[v], there is a large pension gap between the sexes: On average, women receive 46 percent less pension than men. In 2017, a study found that at the time of the survey, men had acquired an average pension entitlement of 911 euros, while women had received one of only 636 euros. The study counts single women, in particular, among the risk groups for old-age poverty. In 2036, almost half of them could be living below the poverty line. However, they were better educated and worked longer than the generations before them.

[i] https://www.absolventa.de/karriereguide/arbeitsentgelt/gehaltsunterschied-maenner-frauen

[ii] https://onlinemarketing.de/karriere/bueroalltag/gender-gap-zeigt-sich-auch-beim-sparen

[iii] https://taz.de/Frauenquote-an-deutschen-Unis/!5404497/

[iv] https://www.news4teachers.de/2018/04/maennerdomaene-wissenschaft-zu-wenig-professorinnen-an-den-universitaeten-klarer-fall-von-diskriminierung/

[v] https://www.fluter.de/warum-frauen-weniger-rente-kriegen