CARLA ÅHLANDER

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Und das sehe ich ziemlich nüchtern (And I see that quite soberly) Waltraud (Born 1941 in Grünberg, Schlesien. Lives in Berlin): Well I… I can only say it from my point of view. Well for me, reunification meant a step back in equality for women in the GDR, to a degree that I couldn’t have foreseen. The problems that I hear about today were never a problem for women in the GDR. Nobody could tell me when I should carry on with my education – I knew that myself. Nobody has to tell me that you don’t pinch my behind – I mean, sexual harrassment as an idea just didn’t arrive in the GDR. Now I know that it can be a problem – all the things that actually are being made clear to me now, what women in the west have been dealing with. And for me that’s a… as far as the question of abortion, I mean a woman’s right to decide for herself when she has a child, that that was taken away, these are things that we, as women, have fought to achieve in the GDR. And they’ve just been dropped, right! It’s a basic condition of equal rights for women! That they can decide for themselves when they want to become mothers, and how they want to run their lives. And these are all things that are completely gone! I mean, that the church has something to say there! – No! And I have to say, these equal rights are for me one of the biggest – the loss of equality – and the women, are one of the biggest victims of the reunification. And I see that quite soberly. Other people might have different opinions, but I’ve lived through it myself and I feel, then as now, it’s an insult how women are treated in this society, right? That makes me…! I mean, when women had to queue up to get meat in the GDR, then people talked about that women had a double responsibility – but we were happy to take that on, because we wanted both. So that’s something that has nothing, I mean nothing, to do with a devaluing of women in the GDR. But the devaluing of women in the Federal Republic is everywhere! – that women have to get support scholarships to reenter their working lives, that they have to recieve help in order to be able to work – we never worried about that kind of thing, because women were just as much as involved in the job market as men were. And there weren’t different wages for men and women and no preconceptions against women if they would have children – all these things that keep coming up in the question of equal rights for women. So a woman is pretty much there to have children and maybe even do the housekeeping, but in this society, in my opinion, there’s nothing more available for a woman. And then they want… women just don’t want to face up to things, no, they set up women’s centres and projects and I’m sure it’s an important, useful… but it’s always just on the surface! It doesn’t go any deeper! Nobody will make the social conditions possible, that would allow women to have equal working rights. That’s a basic concern in a society.

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