Aspects

The following gender aspects are of particular importance in the area of social security.

• The social security system in the Federal Republic of Germany is income-related. Thus, status while employed is continued into receipt of social security. Social security benefits such as unemployment benefit and pensions are based on the principle of contribution equivalence, that is, high contributions mean a high level of benefits. Because women on average earn less and spend fewer years of their lives at work, they receive on average significantly lower social security benefits than men.
  
  
• A large part of social security is guaranteed via derived rights acquired via marriage partner status and taken up mostly by (married) women. Of particular importance in this connection are the surviving dependents’ pension in the area of statutory pension insurance (“widow’s pension”) and the contribution-free joint insurance of non-working spouses under the statutory health and nursing care insurance schemes. These marriage-related arrangements uphold material (and consequently personal) dependency.
  
  
• The image of the male breadwinner (and non-working housewife) so dominant in West Germany is currently losing ground. Women are more and more frequently going into paid employment. Accordingly, the trend in the reform of social security systems is towards individualizing social rights (Adult Worker Model) and the successive abolition of derived rights.
  
  
• Over the past few years, claims have been established which derive from work in the family home (e.g. the additive crediting of periods spent taking care of children for pension entitlement). As a rule, this increases women’s pension entitlements, but cannot as a rule compensate for contribution gaps resulting from the employment record.
  
  
• There is a general danger in the individualization of social rights that the level of social security for women will be (too) low, since the abolition of derived rights is not yet accompanied by corresponding opportunities for continual periods of employment and the concomitant acquisition by women of their own entitlements. Individualization of social rights is thus only meaningful if it at the same time enables women to secure their own existences independently.
  
  
• New gender-based inequalities are being created in private pension insurance, which has been accorded greater prominence by the most recent reforms in social policy. Because women are on average expected to live longer, insurance premiums for women for private pensions and private health insurance are higher than those for men. From 2006, state subsidies are being granted to private pension insurance (“Riester-Rente”) only if they offer unisex rates for premiums. Other obvious inequalities, such as the different retirement age for women and men which existed until 1992, have also been removed.
  
  
• Contrary to the general trend towards individualization of social rights, there is a trend in the basic security net for jobseekers towards a re-familialization of social security. When Unemployment Benefit II is claimed, the concept of “community of need” comes into play, by means of which entitlement is reduced or even eliminated because partners’ incomes are more heavily taken into account. This has an over-proportional impact on women because they are much more frequently regarded as not being in need and forced to rely on their partners’ income because of the better average integration of men into the world of paid employment.
  
  
• On the whole, the rate of poverty among women continues to be higher than among men. Poverty in old age is, however, increasingly being overtaken by poverty due to unemployment. This is frequently unemployment caused by the family situation, the proportion of single mothers being very high in this group.
  
  
• Nursing care insurance guarantees social security in the event that nursing care is needed. Carers may claim cash benefits for the non-institutionalized care of family members. This represents an upgrading in the value accorded to unpaid work (otherwise usually done by women), but the benefits that are paid are not enough to cover the cost of living. At the same time, women over 75 are themselves more greatly in need of nursing care.
  
  
• The system of social security is complemented by a tax system that supports the single-income marriage by means of tax splitting for married couples and creates incentives for married women to interrupt or reduce the scope of their working lives.

Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend: 1. Datenreport zur Gleichstellung von Frauen und Männern in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland – Kapitel 7: Soziale Sicherung, erstellt vom Deutschen Jugendinstitut in Kooperation mit dem Statistischen Bundesamt, Berlin 2005.

Bundesregierung: Lebenslagen in Deutschland. Der erste Armutsbericht der Bundesregierung, Berlin 2001.

BMFSFJ: Zur Berufs- und Einkommenssituation von Frauen und Männern, Berlin 2001.

Kulawik, Teresa: Wohlfahrtsstaaten und Geschlechterregime im internationalen Vergleich, gender politik online, Berlin 2005.

Leitner, Sigrid/ Ostner, Ilona/ Schratzenstaller, Margit (Hg.): Wohlfahrtsstaat und Geschlechterverhältnis im Umbruch. Was kommt nach dem Ernährermodell? Wiesbaden 2004.