Aspects
Gender aspects with regard to the family
Compatibility:
Children need active parents. Nonetheless, only a small percentage of fathers take parental leave. Time budget studies, too, show that many fathers do not take on this role in a socially-active way. This suggests unchanged conventional gender roles. But the Federal Government’s current time budget study also shows that one father in three would like to have more time for himself and his family (Federal Ministry for Women, Senior Citizens, Families and Youth/Destasis 2003b). So there is a discrepancy between actual and desired structures and between the legal situation and the realities of people’s lives, especially between the legal right to parental leave for fathers and actual take-up. It is often just as difficult for men to assert family-related needs such as child-care and nursing care for dependants against superiors and companies as it is for women. Gender Mainstreaming in family policy therefore means giving mothers and fathers incentives to invest more heavily in their roles as parents and taking measures to break down role clichés within companies, regarding private needs more strongly in connection with paid work and recognizing the profit inherent in the experiences people can gain from being parents. The Internet portal “Medium-sized companies and the family” [German] offers support in this for small and medium-sized companies.
Care:
Children need children. On the one hand, the PISA Study has shown that the quantity and quality of child-care and educational facilities and institutions in Germany need to be improved. On the other hand, there is still a prevailing notion in Germany, unlike in other countries, and more in the “old” than the “new” federal states, that it can only be good for mothers to spend at least the first three years at home with the child. Gender Mainstreaming means directing family policy measures at various target groups: parents who wish to place their children in day-care facilities need good facilities that are flexible and available in adequate quantities. Fathers or mothers who wish to stay at home with their children need acceptance and measures to prevent them suffering material or immaterial disadvantages as a result.
Demographic change:
Since the mid 1960s the birthrate in Germany has been sinking. The average number of children in families is relatively constant, and there is no discernible trend towards single-child families. There is a de facto split in fertility behavior: either a fundamental decision is made against having children, or a decision is made to have (at least) two children. This trend contains numerous components: men are more frequently childless than women, German women are more frequently childless than women from an immigrant background, single and divorced people are more frequently childless than married people, and highly educated people are more frequently childless than people with a low level of academic achievement. Especially highly educated men and women decide against having children for many various reasons: for women these include conflicts with their professional careers, while men are often put off by the prospect of new responsibilities in their daily lives and life-long maintenance obligations. By means of Gender Mainstreaming, people are addressed as men and women in each of these very different life contexts. Gender Mainstreaming provides tools for taking important aspects of demographic change into account.
Socialization:
Children need room to develop. Human beings are still made into “boys” and “girls” by means of socialization in the family in a relatively traditional way. This is where “gender” is created. These processes are described by researchers as gender-specific socialization and “doing gender”. The impact of role models, expectations, and praise or criticism by family members and others for certain behavior all have a strong influence on our notions of masculinity and femininity, our own identities, the way we plan our futures and, thus, our future opportunities. Gender Mainstreaming is aimed at breaking down hierarchical and stereotypical gender roles. This means that children should have less rigid models and more freedom to develop to try things out as individuals instead of having their own diversity of behavior stunted at an early age by gender stereotypes. This space for development can be provided by setting legal, economic, social and cultural framework conditions.
Promotion of the family
The German tax system is oriented to the family unit, among other things, but does not do justice to the pluralization of lifestyles. The largest family-related tax benefits are given by means of the system of tax splitting between married couples, in which it is not parenthood but the fact of being a conventional family that has the effect of reducing tax. In fact, tax policy includes the principle of equal treatment of identical incomes and the principle of allowing for the ability to pay. Gender Mainstreaming then means, for instance, that unmarried couples and civil partnerships should not be subject to discrimination compared with married couples, but that promotion of families should take priority in tax law.
Integration:
Immigration today largely comprises families joining their relatives abroad. The family is crucial to the success of efforts at integration. The foreign family, the foreign woman or the foreign man are just imagined notions, since the life situations of people with an immigration background do indeed differ greatly and are affected by different factors. Stereotyping is not infrequently gender-related discrimination; this is just as true for Asian women as it is for Turkish women who are perceived as being deficient, backward and submissive. A stereotype image of the “other” is one of the causes of the difficult employment situation for immigrant men and, more particularly, for immigrant women. At the same time, the central role of the mother in the success of the family’s integration, for instance in encouraging their children’s language learning and in ensuring financial security, is often overlooked. Gender Mainstreaming in integration policy therefore means countering gender stereotyping and enabling equal opportunities for participation of immigrant men and women in all areas of society.
Improving the social situation:
Research in social sciences on distribution of wealth in the Federal Republic of Germany has provided indications of gender-specific poverty risks. The interplay between family law and tax law has a different impact on men and women, for instance when they marry. Divorce has a gender-specific impact as a rule to the extent that women come off worse financially. The Federal Government’s 2001 Poverty Report likewise shows that it is predominantly single mothers who are exposed to the highest risk of being dependent on social security, since the lack of child care structures severely restricts their chances of being employed. Gender Mainstreaming aims at avoiding gender-specific poverty and taking action against gender-specific poverty risk with the aid of tax law or state support benefits.
Children need active parents. Nonetheless, only a small percentage of fathers take parental leave. Time budget studies, too, show that many fathers do not take on this role in a socially-active way. This suggests unchanged conventional gender roles. But the Federal Government’s current time budget study also shows that one father in three would like to have more time for himself and his family (Federal Ministry for Women, Senior Citizens, Families and Youth/Destasis 2003b). So there is a discrepancy between actual and desired structures and between the legal situation and the realities of people’s lives, especially between the legal right to parental leave for fathers and actual take-up. It is often just as difficult for men to assert family-related needs such as child-care and nursing care for dependants against superiors and companies as it is for women. Gender Mainstreaming in family policy therefore means giving mothers and fathers incentives to invest more heavily in their roles as parents and taking measures to break down role clichés within companies, regarding private needs more strongly in connection with paid work and recognizing the profit inherent in the experiences people can gain from being parents. The Internet portal “Medium-sized companies and the family” [German] offers support in this for small and medium-sized companies.
Care:
Children need children. On the one hand, the PISA Study has shown that the quantity and quality of child-care and educational facilities and institutions in Germany need to be improved. On the other hand, there is still a prevailing notion in Germany, unlike in other countries, and more in the “old” than the “new” federal states, that it can only be good for mothers to spend at least the first three years at home with the child. Gender Mainstreaming means directing family policy measures at various target groups: parents who wish to place their children in day-care facilities need good facilities that are flexible and available in adequate quantities. Fathers or mothers who wish to stay at home with their children need acceptance and measures to prevent them suffering material or immaterial disadvantages as a result.
Demographic change:
Since the mid 1960s the birthrate in Germany has been sinking. The average number of children in families is relatively constant, and there is no discernible trend towards single-child families. There is a de facto split in fertility behavior: either a fundamental decision is made against having children, or a decision is made to have (at least) two children. This trend contains numerous components: men are more frequently childless than women, German women are more frequently childless than women from an immigrant background, single and divorced people are more frequently childless than married people, and highly educated people are more frequently childless than people with a low level of academic achievement. Especially highly educated men and women decide against having children for many various reasons: for women these include conflicts with their professional careers, while men are often put off by the prospect of new responsibilities in their daily lives and life-long maintenance obligations. By means of Gender Mainstreaming, people are addressed as men and women in each of these very different life contexts. Gender Mainstreaming provides tools for taking important aspects of demographic change into account.
Socialization:
Children need room to develop. Human beings are still made into “boys” and “girls” by means of socialization in the family in a relatively traditional way. This is where “gender” is created. These processes are described by researchers as gender-specific socialization and “doing gender”. The impact of role models, expectations, and praise or criticism by family members and others for certain behavior all have a strong influence on our notions of masculinity and femininity, our own identities, the way we plan our futures and, thus, our future opportunities. Gender Mainstreaming is aimed at breaking down hierarchical and stereotypical gender roles. This means that children should have less rigid models and more freedom to develop to try things out as individuals instead of having their own diversity of behavior stunted at an early age by gender stereotypes. This space for development can be provided by setting legal, economic, social and cultural framework conditions.
Promotion of the family
The German tax system is oriented to the family unit, among other things, but does not do justice to the pluralization of lifestyles. The largest family-related tax benefits are given by means of the system of tax splitting between married couples, in which it is not parenthood but the fact of being a conventional family that has the effect of reducing tax. In fact, tax policy includes the principle of equal treatment of identical incomes and the principle of allowing for the ability to pay. Gender Mainstreaming then means, for instance, that unmarried couples and civil partnerships should not be subject to discrimination compared with married couples, but that promotion of families should take priority in tax law.
Integration:
Immigration today largely comprises families joining their relatives abroad. The family is crucial to the success of efforts at integration. The foreign family, the foreign woman or the foreign man are just imagined notions, since the life situations of people with an immigration background do indeed differ greatly and are affected by different factors. Stereotyping is not infrequently gender-related discrimination; this is just as true for Asian women as it is for Turkish women who are perceived as being deficient, backward and submissive. A stereotype image of the “other” is one of the causes of the difficult employment situation for immigrant men and, more particularly, for immigrant women. At the same time, the central role of the mother in the success of the family’s integration, for instance in encouraging their children’s language learning and in ensuring financial security, is often overlooked. Gender Mainstreaming in integration policy therefore means countering gender stereotyping and enabling equal opportunities for participation of immigrant men and women in all areas of society.
Improving the social situation:
Research in social sciences on distribution of wealth in the Federal Republic of Germany has provided indications of gender-specific poverty risks. The interplay between family law and tax law has a different impact on men and women, for instance when they marry. Divorce has a gender-specific impact as a rule to the extent that women come off worse financially. The Federal Government’s 2001 Poverty Report likewise shows that it is predominantly single mothers who are exposed to the highest risk of being dependent on social security, since the lack of child care structures severely restricts their chances of being employed. Gender Mainstreaming aims at avoiding gender-specific poverty and taking action against gender-specific poverty risk with the aid of tax law or state support benefits.
Literature:
- FOCUS – Fostering Caring Masculinities, a research project initiated by the Norwegian Ministry of Children and Equality, including five country studies on Germany, Iceland, Norway, Slovenia and Spain and a transnational report:
- Langvasbråten, Trude / Teigen, Mari: FOCUS - The European Dimension, Oslo 2006.
- Gärtner, Marc / Gieseke, Jonas / Beier, Stefan: Fostering Caring Masculinities (FOCUS) - German National Report, Berlin 2006.
Including qualitative research in an internationally operating energy company and in the Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt).
- Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ): 20 Year Old Women and Men Today - Life Plans, Role Models, Attitudes to Gender Equality. A Qualitative Survey by Sinus Sociovision for the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (2007).
- Stiegler, Barbara: Gender in Relation - Ideas for Gender Mainstreaming Processes, Center for Economic and Social Policy Research, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, 2005, especially chapter 2.1 Family and gender perceptions (p.14-17).
- Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend: 1. Datenreport zur Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland – Kapitel 4: Familien- und Lebensformen von Frauen und Männern, erstellt vom Deutschen Jugendinstitut in Kooperation mit dem Statistischen Bundesamt, Berlin 2005.
- Andreß, Hans-Jürgen/Borgloh, Barbara/Güllner, Miriam: Wenn aus Liebe rote Zahlen werden - über die wirtschaftlichen Folgen von Trennung und Scheidung, Wiesbaden 2003. Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Ausländerfragen: Bericht der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Ausländerfragen über die Lage der Ausländer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Bonn 2002.
- BMFSFJ/Destatis (Hg.): Die Familie im Spiegel der amtlichen Statistik. Berlin 2003a.
- BMFSFJ/Destatis (Hg.): Wo bleibt die Zeit? Die Zeitverwendung der Bevölkerung in Deutschland 2001/02. Wiesbaden 2003b.
- Bundesregierung: Lebenslagen in Deutschland. Der erste Armutsbericht der Bundesregierung, Berlin 2001.
- Gesterkamp, Thomas: Im Spagat zwischen Beruf und Familie. Werbung für die "Väterzeit". In: Das Parlament, Nr. 19 20, 2002.
- Meier, Uta: Warum Frauen und Männer (keine) Kinder haben wollen. In: Frühe Kindheit, 6.2003,1. S. 16-23.
- Schratzenstaller, Margit: Frauen und Männer im deutschen Steuersystem. In: Wrede, Brigitta (Hg.): Geld und Geschlecht. Tabus, Paradoxien, Ideologien. Opladen 2003, S. 103-120.
BMFSFJ, Europäischer Sozialfonds: Lokale Bündnisse für Familie, Informationen zur Initiative, Berlin 2004
BMFSFJ, Zentralverband des Deutschen Handwerks: Familienfreundliche Maßnhamen im Handwerk, Berlin 2004
BMFSFJ: Unternehmensbeispiele mit familienfreundlichen Maßnahmen unter www.erfolgsfaktor-familie.de
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