Three Steps Back for Women: German Unification, Gender, and University “Reform”

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Abstract
The process of German unification has been a series of political surprises. Before the chain of events of summer and fall 1989 that led to the fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989, few could have predicted the “change of direction” (die Wende) of the government that followed. Fewer still would have suspected how quickly the overthrow of Honecker and his government would be supplanted by a drive toward economic and then political unification. In less than a year, on December 3, 1990, the GDR ceased to exist, being wholly absorbed as five new states in the existing legal and political structures of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). This has meant a wholesale restructuring of every social institution in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), not merely the economy; the method of unification chosen meant that all East German laws and organizations had to be brought into conformity with a virtually unaltered West German legal and social system.This process has been troubled and troubling in many different respects, but not the least of the surprises to many observers has been the important role gender has played in the unification process. Not only did the government face sufficient protest that it needed to defer reconciling the different legal regulations of abortion in the two states, but shortly after the unification treaty was signed and its practical consequences began to be felt, the observation became commonplace that “women were the losers” in this process.

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