Literature review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Literature review - Essay Example Impediments such as the lack of child-care facilities and stores remaining open only during the usual working hours also exist. Child care can be very expensive, and even for those who can afford it, it is hard to find it. Consequently, it is hard for many mothers to return to work after bearing a child as also for working women to shop. To compound matters, part-time jobs are almost non-existent. Gender and work in Germany: Pre and Post Unification The division of Germany had major repercussions in gender equality, specifically in the matter of division of labor in both paid and unpaid work. In the case of East Germany, it needed and expected men as well as women to be paid workers, while in West Germany, the conservative welfare state typically consigned women to unpaid housewifery and men to breadwinning. Consequently, women of East Germany gained better equality in the labor market than women in West Germany. However, in spite of the East German government’s professed comm itment to eliminate gender inequality altogether, employed women failed to attain full gender equality, particularly with regard to occupational integration, earnings, as well as division of labor at home (Rosenfeld et al, 2001). Institutional change and family formation Institutional control over the course of life and the formation of the family remained high under the highly regulative, pro-natalist and communist government in East Germany. The strong regulative nation was abruptly replaced by the establishment of the democratic West German model after a separation that lasted 28 years. After the downfall of the communist regime in East Germany, there was an intensification of economic pressures all over Germany, and more so in the tumult of changeover in East Germany, rather than in the pre-FRG. East German women reacted to the economic confusion as well as insecurities of the process of transition with de-standardized family formation as also a high incidence of alternative fam ily modes, which was in fact according to their secular familial values. A significant part of the East German story is the strong pattern under the extreme institutional control wielded by the communist system, compared to which the de-standardization after reunification remains in stark contrast (Fasang, 2011). On the contrary West Germany underwent a process of re-standardization of family formation. This comprises of either traditional marriage as also motherhood pattern or an interruption of family formation. This schism is motivated by structural difficulties to merge a career as well as a family, tax concessions for the breadwinner of the family and the never-changing conventional family values in West Germany. In the later stages of re-standardization there is a high incidence of cohabitation, the resultant motherhood out of wedlock, as also divorce. Women’s fertility and employment decisions In either part of Germany, the probability of women bearing a first child is correlated negatively, with employment as well as educational achievement. However, with second and third birth risks, the negative correlation flags. In East Germany, virtually every mother goes back to work 18 months after a birth. However, in West Germany, this ratio is a lot smaller and when the child begins nursery school/school, women enter the labour market yet again in higher ratios. These factors indicate a powerful and strong influence of