Dear women-in-bio,
I am usually just a "lurker" in this group and rarely get round to actually
posting here. But, being German, being a single mum of a 5-year old
daughter and working at a university (equiv. to assistent prof. in
neurobiology) I felt touched by some of the past discussion and I am
therefore trying to comment on a few things I have come across here during
the past few weeks.
First of all,
Cindy and Karen - thank you very much for your reply - I had never before
heard of UU. In Germany, the diversity of churches is not as abundand as in
US. It is very much devided in Roman Catholic and Protenstant (which,
depending on the area within Germany, is Lutherian, Calvinist, or a Union
of these two). The socalled "free churches" which include Baptists,
Methodists, etc. are very much a minority.
I have just looked up the UU homepage, appearantly there are 33 UU
communities in Germany, but altogether they only have about 2000
members.
We certainly do have church weddings here, I'd even guess that of the
married couples I know about 90% got married in church (although many of
them are not regular church-goers). But, as Sylvia said, irrespective of
whether you get married in church or not, you have always got to go to the
registrar's office to be legally married.
As to the discrimination of women, who want to have children and their job,
I don't have the feeling that there is a great difference between the more
conservative south of Germany and the more "liberal" north. I grew up in
Munich and went to University at Konstanz, a small town near the Swiss
border, which (apart from the "green" votes of the students) is also rather
conservative. About five years ago, I got my job here in Duesseldorf, which
is the capital of a part of the country which has been governed by the social
democrats for decades (at the moment it is a coalition of the social
democrats and the green party). Here I live in a small town just outside
Duesseldorf.
Anyway, I can't say that there is any difference between the south and here,
not with respect to the options for child-care, not with respect to the
acceptance by a lot of the neighbours. The only difference I can see is
maybe between small towns (where people seem to be more narrow minded)
and large cities. Maybe it is also a matter of education: women who have a
university degree have invested so much in their education that they are less
willing to simply stay at home when they have their children.
An interesting experience was the period when I had to apply for a job,
starting when a was so late in my pregnancy, that it was very obvious till
when my daughter was just a couple of months old and I had to take her
with me to the job interviews because I was still breast-feeding her. It
probably already was a certain selection of profs, who invited me for an
interview, but all of them seemed to be willing to support me. What I found
very unexpected, but also rather shocking was the fact that it was the ones
over 50 who did accept my situation (in fact: the ones who had daughters
approaching my age), while the younger ones told me, that they didn't see
how it would be going to work... It was the only time that I encountered
open discrimination, but luckily in the end I was able to choose a very
friendly and supportive environment at the department where I am working
at present. There are slightly more males than females in this department
and I have never come across any discrimination.
Just recently I have read some numbers on women at German universities
which might be of interest to you: generally, there are slightly more female
than male students. However, at the end of 1995 only 8.2 % of the full
professors were female, and only 4.8 % of those holding a chair. Since 1990
the number of women completing their "habilitation", the formal
qualification neccessary to apply for professorship, has increased from 100
to 438, in the western part of the country the number has triplicated since
1980.
A main difference between male and female professors is that more than
60% of the females don't have any children, as compared to less than 20% of
the male professors. More male than female professors are married. Of
these, a higher percentage of the male than female professors have partners,
who don't have their own job (i.e. proportionally more housewifes than
housemen).
One of the major problem of the German system, why women are
discouraged from an university career is in my opinion, that we don't have
any tenure positions. All positions within a faculty, except for
professorships and some very rare exceptions, are limited in time (to a
maximum of 5 to 6 years). After this time, at the latest, you have to get a job
at another university. During this time, you are meant to achieve your
habilitation and then apply for professorship. Originally this was meant to
broaden the horizon of the future applicants for professorships and to avoid
that departments became sort of "inbred .
In theory, this regulation hits males as much as females. The main
difference is, that within relationships, men still tend to be older than their
girlfriends/wifes and thus often are further advanced in their career and less
willing/able to move to another town. But also, men seem to be more
willing than women to take on a job in another town and risk seeing their
family only during the weekend, if they think it neccessary for their career.
I.e. I do know several couples, which have at least one child and both
parnters have a job at the university, where the men accepted a job in
another town, or even in another country, leaving their partner to look after
the child and her own job (till she would eventually move there, too). But I
don't know of any examples the other way round.
Another point is that if you fail to get a post as professor, you are considered
too old and highly overqualified for a lot of jobs in industry. This makes the
decision difficult, whether one should go for habilitation or not. Men seem
to be more willing to take the risk, while a high proportion of women drops
out. Why? I don t know. Maybe lack of role models, fear of discrimination,
unwillingness to put up with this system.
To come to an end, I'd say that, at least at the moment I am not as
pessimistic about the situation of women at German universities as Sabine,
Sylvia and Constanze. Maybe, because I am in a rather fortunate position at
the moment and still have a few years ahead of me in this department. At
least I ve gor the feeling that things are improving here, too, albeit slowly.
Dorothee
