Documents - Men, Women and Labor: East Germany

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1.	Order Regarding Measures to Increase Labor Productivity and to Further Improve the Material Situation of the Workers and Salaried Employees in Industry and the Transportation Sector (1947) In view of the considerable economic problems in the Eastern zone, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) demanded greater labor productivity and improved work discipline. This was....
2.	Recommendations for Promoting Women’s Work in East German Enterprises (1949) These recommendations from the Thuringian Ministry for Labor and Social Affairs make clear that women’s work met with resistance in East Germany in early 1949. As the document suggests, the resistance....
3.	Letters to the Editor of the Magazine Die Frau von heute [The Woman of Today]: Is the Working Woman a Bad Mother? (1950) These two female authors of letters to the editor of the East German women’s magazine Die Frau von heute [The Woman of Today] endorsed women’s work in the GDR. They viewed themselves....
4.	Housework with Husband and Children (1955) This 1955 letter to the editor of the East German women’s magazine Die Frau von heute [The Woman of Today] described the division of labor in a household with two working parents. The....
5.	Anita Grandke, "Does the Working Woman Destroy her Family?" (June 11, 1960) This article from the SED mouthpiece Neues Deutschland praised the ideal of the “socialist family” in which both spouses created the basis for a fulfilling family life through equal participation....
6.	Comment by a Female Teacher after a Lecture by Kurt Hager on the Situation in Schools (October 1960) This comment by a female teacher after a 1960 speech by the SED’s chief ideologue, Kurt Hager, was unsparing in its description of the burdens imposed on GDR women by the demands of family and work.....
7.	Assessment of the 12th Plenum of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany on Getting Women to Take up Gainful Employment (1961) At the beginning of the 1960s, the political pressure on GDR women to work outside the home continued unabated. In 1961, the Democratic Women’s League of Germany [Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands],....
8.	Report by the Central Women’s Committee (Bergmann-Borsig) on the Tenth Anniversary of the Women’s Committees (1962) This report by the Central Women’s Committee [Zentraler Frauenausschuss] of the Bergmann-Borsig enterprise criticized the lack of women in its middle and upper management – a lack that persisted....
9.	Gainfully Employed Persons and Labor Force Participation Rate (1949-1970) This chart shows that the ratio of women in the workforce in East Germany had risen steadily since 1949. In 1970, nearly half of all those gainfully employed were women.
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