German Mothers and Gendernomics

The IHT journalist Katrin Bennhold provides her latest work on mothers in the German workforce -- or rather, their absence.

Only 14 percent of one-child mothers return to full-time work once the baby is born, she notes, and a mere 6 percent of mothers stay full-time after two children. In a culture still defined (tragically, says Bennhold) by the old adage of “kinder, küche, kirche” -- or “children, kitchen, church” -- women too often stand at the losing end of professional prosperity and the leadership roles available to their male counterparts in what is, despite the ongoing eurozone crisis, one of the world's wealthiest nations.

The gender disparity is not for lack of effort by German women. Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is pointed to as a prominent counter-example when women push for greater equality in the work world. And one of Merkel's cabinet members, Ursula von der Layen, has advocated paternity leave and a quota system for female presence on corporate executive boards.

"Laws help change mentalities," she has said. Adding heft to the German debate from outside, EU vice president Viviane Reding has written to all companies of Germany's DAX stock market, urging increased female visibility in their boards or else risking EU-wide quotas. 

One angle Bennhold mentions -- then leaves disappointingly unexplored -- is the comparison to corporate gender profiles in the United States. Despite the stark contrast between state funding for daycare and other child-oriented services, U.S. boardrooms boast a much greater parity of skirts to suits than Germany can. Behind even such traditionally male-dominated countries as China, Germany scores a paltry two percent of females on executive committees. 

Courtesy New York Times

And Bennhold leaves another, more provocative question well wide of her report's scope: what are the social effects on German women who, seeing how steep the ramp is for career and family, forego child-rearing altogether? The author alludes to the consequences, perhaps unwittingly: 

"One of the countries in most need of female talent — at 1.39 the German birthrate is among the lowest in Europe and labor shortages in skilled technical professions are already 150,000..."

The reader is left to wonder what may be revealed by deeper study on what economic, social and emotional effects are wrought on a society that statistically seems anti-family.

EurAmerican has examined Bennhold's work previously, on French mothers and the conditions particular to their role in a neighboring and similarly male-driven culture to that of her native Germany. In each, she interviews a broad sample of feminists and ordinary women.

She would make her good reports better if she practiced her own lesson of gender equality -- by balancing her perspective with more male voices, and considered them in working toward the common goals of not only gender equality, but maximum opportunity, competitiveness and, I dare say, liberty for all.

UPDATE: Progress on the gender front? French think-tanker Dominique Moisi argues that European women may be the continent's best bet for "agents of change," while the EU Parliament backed a non-binding agreement on July 7 to strengthen obligations for female representation on EU-area executive boards.

Germany’s Libya Abstention and the World: What Now?

         Germany’s March 17^th decision to abstain from the United Nations vote for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Libya has unleashed a firestorm of international criticism – as well as open skepticism on the country’s current and future fitness for leadership on the world stage. The tumultuous last few weeks have observers voicing three primary concerns on whether Germany should (or even could) assume the world leadership position it claims to want: 1) a paradox, both in policy and in image, 2) battered confidence on the part of its foreign partners, and 3) an uncertain future in global leadership.

         Germany’s actions are paradoxical at national, European and international levels. The country long followed draconian foreign-affairs strictures such as “never alone” and “never again Auschwitz,” which guided the country since it emerged, shuddering and ashamed, from its losing role in World War II. After abstention, these tenets seem, at least in the immediate, to have largely been cast aside – with no alternatives proposed to replace them. Equally problematic are the polling results of German opinion on Libya: Reuters reported in April that a whopping 71 percent of Germans support international intervention in the country. According to a contributor at the online Atlantic Community, 65 percent of Germans – essentially, many of the same voters – would disapprove of German participation therein. The country shows a sort of diplomatic allergy to the often ugly business of conflict prevention. Berlin still insists it wants a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, but after its ill-considered abstention, its Western UN allies will surely be loath to grant such a diplomatic trump card to a partner increasingly seen as unreliable.

         The battered confidence in Germany’s recent diplomacy is perhaps best reflected by the United States and France. (...)

Germany as the EU's "Vicar," Global Christian Support for Israel

From EUobserver, a weird analogy that suggests Germany is the "vicar" of Europe, stuck between a rock and a hard place as the reluctant leader of a crisis-emergent European Union. 

The piece cites the sociological concept of "organizational punishment" -- in which the leader of a group purported to uphold communal values is punished whenever it fails to meet its own lofty principles -- to describe Germany's role, much like a vicar in the Catholic church. 

Speaking of religion, see the latest numbers from the Pew Research Center on foreign policy support toward Israel by white American Christians -- fully 64% of white evangelicals, compared with that of 36% of Catholics and 34% of non-evangelical Protestants. How this sentiment differs from the Israel policy espoused by Christians in Europe! 

More numbers from Pew are below.

Germany Slammed by French Left, Domestic Press on Libya Vote

The French left has damning words for German foreign policy. The country, which recently decided to abstain from armed intervention in Libya in a March 17 UN Security Council vote, has since faced withering rebukes from the international community. 

Jean Quatremer, a star writer of the left-leaning newspaper La Libération, takes a decidedly EU-focused approach to his criticism, dismayed that "the [European] Union must, therefore, stay confined to what's humanitarian..." He echoed the words of new foreign minister Alain Juppé, who on Wednesday lamented, "must we resign ourselves to the EU remaining a humanitarian NGO?" He also quoted ex-foreign affairs minister Hubert Védrine, who lamented while in office that the EU must not grow into a kind of "giant Switzerland." When the Libé's top name aligns with the center-right French government's official voice on foreign affairs, Germany faces a uniformly hostile neighbor, which will also rally outside opinion into France's camp and against Germany's.

Der Spiegel, Germany's best-known English-language newspaper, has little better to say about the response to Libya by Angela Merkel and the German foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle. In an article written collectively by Spiegel staff, the newspaper presents a symbolically potent show of solidarity against their government's latest foreign affairs calls.

"The general sense of consternation," they emphatically write, "raises the question of whether this government is simply out of its depth when it comes to foreign policy." They signal that Germany missed a great opportunity to forge a "yes, but" alternative. The team quotes a German diplomat's accusation that his government is guilty of "historical cynicism," and they surmise that "Merkel's administration now welcomes any bad news from Libya that suggests its partners were wrong to intervene." 

And as if Merkel thought it would alleviate anything, Germany unveiled a conciliatory gesture to send more surveillance planes to NATO operations in Afghanistan as a way to free up allied materiel and military hardware for the Libyan campaign.

Turkish Disenchantment with Europe and the West

This article from Orhan Pamuk, a Turkish national and 2006 Nobel laureate in literature, merits a partial re-post from a (rare) EurAm link to The New York Review of Books. Pamuk underscores Turkey's bilateral relationships with France and Germany, couching these into telescoping perspectives on the European Union, "Europe generally," to borrow his apt phrase, and the West at large. 

His view is primarily that of a capital-C Culture angle: he sprinkles references to it throughout the piece, shooting as high as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, as low as Gauloises cigarettes. Pamuk is the intellectual's intellectual, forever able to flaunt his consecration by the Nobel kingmakers. What follows is a surveying of the global landscape from a Turkish vantage point, synthesized from a breadth of subject awareness enviable by any opinion leader.

"That Turkey and other non-Western countries are disenchanted with Europe is something I know from my own travels and conversations... There are also the emotional responses whose significance can best be explained by the example of relations with France. Over the past century, successive generations of the Turkish elite have faithfully taken France as their model, drawing on its understanding of secularism and following its lead on education, literature, and art. So to have France emerge over the past five years as the country most vehemently opposed to the idea of Turkey in Europe has been heartbreaking and disillusioning. It is, however, Europe’s involvement in the war in Iraq that has caused the keenest disappointment in non-western countries, and in Turkey, real anger. The world watched Europe being tricked by Bush into joining this illegitimate and cruel war, while showing immense readiness to be tricked. [italics EurAm]

When looking at the landscape of Europe from Istanbul or beyond, the first thing one sees is that Europe generally (like the European Union) is confused about its internal problems. It is clear that the peoples of Europe have a lot less experience than Americans when it comes to living with those whose religion, skin color, or cultural identity are different from their own, and that many of them do not warm to the prospect: this resistance to outsiders makes Europe’s internal problems all the more intractable. The recent discussions in Germany on integration and multiculturalism—particularly its large Turkish minority—are a case in point.

As the economic crisis deepens and spreads, Europe may be able, by turning in on itself, to postpone its struggle to preserve the culture of the “bourgeois” in Flaubert’s sense of the word, but that will not solve the problem. When I look at Istanbul, which becomes a little more complex and cosmopolitan with every passing year and now attracts immigrants from all over Asia and Africa, I have no trouble concluding that the poor, unemployed, and undefended of Asia and Africa who are looking for new places to live and work cannot be kept out of Europe indefinitely. Higher walls, tougher visa restrictions, and ships patrolling borders in increasing numbers will only postpone the day of reckoning. Worst of all, anti-immigration politics, policies, and prejudices are already destroying the core values that made Europe what it was.

In the Turkish schoolbooks of my childhood there was no discussion of democracy or women’s rights, but on the packets of Gauloises that French intellectuals and artists smoked (or so we thought) were printed the words “liberté, égalité, fraternité” and these were much in circulation. “Fraternité” came to stand for the spirit of solidarity and resistance promoted by movements of the left. But callousness toward the sufferings of immigrants and minorities, and the castigation of Asians, Africans, and Muslims now leading difficult lives in the peripheries of Europe—even holding them solely responsible for their woes—are not “brotherhood.”

One can understand how many Europeans might suffer anxiety and even panic as they seek to preserve Europe’s great cultural traditions, profit from the riches it covets in the non-Western world, and retain the advantages gained over so many centuries of class conflict, colonialism, and internecine war. But if Europe is to protect itself, would it be better for it to turn inward, or should it perhaps remember its fundamental values, which once made it the center of gravity for all the world’s intellectuals?"

 

Hewitt on Europe and Youth in 2010

Gavin Hewitt of the BBC has posted a wrap-up of the year 2010 in Europe. I'd like to underscore his recurring theme of the beleaguered status of European youth. He begins with three sketches of young people down on their luck: seemingly intelligent and educated young Spaniards queuing for unemployment benefits; a roomful of raised hands when Hewitt asks trade school students if they anticipate emigration; young Italians ready to riot at the broken promises of their government and the generation in power. 

Hewitt goes on to describe their lives in the crushing uncertainly of economic souring, and the new civic religion called "austerity" that most accept only begrudgingly -- because they see no other choice. The year 2011, according to Hewitt, portends to be no less bleak.

"Youth unemployment and austerity are a dangerous cocktail that will play out on the streets of 2011. Austerity challenges a deeply-held idea of a European way of life where the state offers layers of protection. Old certainties are being swept away. Social contracts snapped. An ever-expanding public sector is being pruned. Europe, in the long term, may benefit from a smaller state sector, but no one should underestimate the shock of the new. [...]

In 2011 the orthodoxy of austerity, I suspect, will be challenged. The Greeks are tiring of the lean years that seem to stretch out before them. A new government in Ireland may try and renegotiate the terms of the EU/IMF loan. Increasingly voices question the fairness of it all. In Ireland the banks' debts were taken onto the government's books and the country headed for insolvency. A proud country [and in Ireland's case, an overwhelmingly young one] has sacrificed its independence - that's how many in Ireland see it.

It is a fair bet that in 2011 one or more country will restructure its debt.

Increasingly, when one returns from the streets of Greece or France or Italy, Brussels seems a side-show. While the unemployment lines lengthen for young people Europe's elite is preoccupied with institutions, with their place in the world. They have strategies for growth - but in the distant future. The discussions too often appear inward-looking. Occasionally there is a flicker of reality. The European Parliament, for instance, led the way in challenging bankers' bonuses. [...]

Europe Under China: The EU's U.N. Tug-of-War

NYT/IHT journalist Judy Dempsey serves up some interesting perspective on Germany and Portugal's recent assession to nonpermanent seats to the UN Security Council. She uses China as an axis of comparison with western powers' UN moves, catering to the center of focus for the American majority of her piece's readers. 

By default, her article relegates Europe to the same observer status Germany and Portugal have just won. 

The following excerpts bring the China element to the fore:

"Europe’s decline is partly linked to China’s growing influence as an economic power, donor and lender. From Belarus to Iran, across Africa and Latin America, China is lending money, forging trade deals and building roads, airports and schools while tapping the natural resources of these countries.

And there are no strings attached. “China sets no conditions, unlike the E.U., which often sets them in an inconsistent way” [quoted from source]. Indeed, China’s way of doing things is seen as a direct challenge to Europe’s dominance in development aid and trade agreements."

And:

"... With the radical shifts in global influence led by China, Europe’s influence is waning, and fast.

The E.U.’s hopes of supporting human rights and democracy around the world are at risk of being defeated by changes in the global balance of power,” said Anthony Dworkin, international law expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Nowhere is this more obvious than at the United Nations, where the Union has suffered embarrassing defeats.

Last month, it failed to win expanded rights to the General Assembly, where it has observer status. A new status would have allowed Brussels the right to make proposals, circulate documents and address the Assembly.

To the dismay of  Catherine Ashton, the Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy [as implemented by the EEAS], some of Europe’s closest allies — Australia, Canada and New Zealand — abstained. Diplomats blamed the Union’s lack of strategy and consultation.

“The E.U.’s shambolic defeat was more than a humiliation,” said Paul Luif, Europe expert at the Austrian Institute for International Affairs in Vienna. “It showed the growing lack of support for an E.U. that seems more and more ineffective at the U.N.”

The article's title is "For Europe, a Challenge to Make Its Voice Resonate." Sounds more than a bit like "Europeans Woo U.S., Promising Relevance," also from the New York Times. One of its most prominent columnists, Roger Cohen, has similarly declared that "Europe is history," a "strategic backwater."

If what is arguably America's most Europhile newspaper sees grim days ahead for Europe, it should be equally gloomy -- and disconcerting -- to ponder the EU's eclipse within the UN Security Council specifically.

The German Finance Tsar's Super-German Stance

German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble

I liked this from the BBC's "Gavin Hewitt's Europe" blog, which is Hewitt's interview with German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Berlin's economic recovery policy. The official asserts that his country's path out of crisis is a correct one, and belabors the point that he wishes no one think that Germany thinks it's the correct one. 

Note the emphatic, traditionally German avoidance of any claim to leadership or even being in the right, a holdover from the country's post-World War II guilt and geopolitical introspection. It's also the consensus-building, lead-by-suggestion style that has characterized the German role in the EU integration process since its start.

Q, Gavin Hewitt: (...) With the German economy doing quite well [in light of the crisis], why is there still a need for an austerity programme here? 

A, Wolfgang Schaeuble: It is not an austerity programme.

Q: Well, it is spending cuts, 80 billion euros of spending cuts.

A: Yes, of course 80 billion in four years... it's not as dramatic as it may seem. Our programme fits in with the EU Stability and Growth Pact [to bring deficits down to 3%]. It's what we call a growth-friendly deficit reduction and that is a [foundation stone] for sustainable growth.

Q: But is part of the reason why you are doing it, to set an example to other EU countries? 

A: No, we are not the teacher for Europe. My principle is that every country has to do its duty... We have to defend the stability of the euro and we have to be in line with the European Stability and Growth Pact. And we are doing it. Not more, not less. And if we do so, we can ask our friends and partners to do the same, not more, not less. We are not the teacher of Europe [emphases by EurA].

Q: You say you are not the teacher of Europe, but Germany is sending out a message that other countries should not live beyond their means.

A: Germany sends out the message that in principle a balanced deficit reduction is not against sustainable economic growth. That is our message.

It means what all Europeans had in mind when we where all together in Toronto at the G20 summit... to say that deficit reduction or exit strategy as it was mentioned in the G20 policy since two years, is the right way.

Of course, you have to make it the right way to fit it into the special situation in any economy, but in principle it's necessary and it's a precondition for sustainable growth. I think the decision of the US is a little critical, but it is not up to me to decide it. For Germany our way is the right one and we won't destroy growth. It's the opposite. Our policy is very good and one precondition for a good economic development.

Q: And what do you say to those who argue that by adopting spending cuts and with other European countries cutting their budget deficit at the same time that it risks choking off growth, just at a time when so many economies are vulnerable?

A: No, the German example is proof it isn't necessarily so. In Germany our policy of a sustainable fiscal framework is a good precondition to increasing internal demand. Internal demand, consumption and investment are all increasing. We have had the highest figures of imports in Germany in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, therefore what we are doing is not against growth, not in Europe, not in our global responsibility, but it's in favour of growth, sustainable growth. (...)

 Also see my previous post in response to an NYT piece on German national pride here, or below.

German Pride, EU Crisis, and the US

Check out this big-picture perspective on resurgent national pride in Germany from the New York Times.  The country that Jurgen Habermas once termed the "self-absorbed colussus," crippled with guilt over two world wars, the horrors of the Nazi-led Holocaust and global acrimony spanning generations is now staging a comeback -- to itself. 

The historically conflicted "German-German relationship" of its citizens could be showing signs of thaw, evident in new roles of German prominence from crisis-time leadership in the European Union, to its soccer team's success in this summer's World Cup to the current preponderance of German acts on European pop charts. From the article:

“Maybe it’s our time again,” said Catherine Mendle, 25, a school social worker strolling the grounds and halls of the square glass and concrete Chancellery building on a recent afternoon as part of a government open house. A military band played in the background, and Mrs. Merkel signed autographs for curious visitors.

“We have this extreme helper syndrome, to try to make the world love us again, and it’s completely overdone,” Ms. Mendle said. Germany, she said, had been reduced to simple stereotypes — Oktoberfest, auto factories, the Holocaust. Its rich traditions in music and literature, and its enduring emphasis on social welfare and a strong commitment to the environment, deserve more respect abroad and at home, Ms. Mendle said.

And this on German politics and history:

 "... Chancellor Angela Merkel has led a bloc of countries fending off President Obama’s calls for stimulus spending to combat the economic crisis, certain that the world should follow Germany’s example of austerity.

German pride did not die after the country’s defeat in World War II. Instead, like Sleeping Beauty in the Brothers Grimm version of the folk tale, it only fell into a deep slumber. The country has now awakened, ready to celebrate its economic ingenuity, its cultural treasures and the unsullied stretches of its history.

As Germany embarks on this journey of self-discovery, the question is whether it will leave behind a European project which was built in no small measure on the nation’s postwar guilt and on its pocketbook."

It remains to be seen how Germany will deal with its load of problems also shared throughout Europe. On integration, for example, a stark line is drawn between the assimilated and those who suffer the brunt of the global unemployment trend, including immigrants, like the Turkish manual laborers brought in en masse during the 1970s and after. Immigration remains today a question roiled by entrenched opinion, and the European demographics problem doesn't help. The German vision for economic recovery stands at loggerheads with the socialized economic thinking of France, Spain, Italy and elsewhere. 

The risk of playing the EU's rich daddy during the crisis, of course, is that other Europeans won't remedy their economic weaknesses exposed by the 2008 meltdown -- or worse yet, that Europe will come to expect German bail-outs at every hard turn -- both after the crisis and in the long run.

And what would such a reality mean for the United States? Frittered German cash means badly depleted EU capital, both of the economic and political kind. (And on the latter: ask an average American to name three EU leaders, they'll likely say "Uhh," "Hmm" and "What?") Skeptics and Euro-Doomers are already airing bold claims that "Europe is history" -- and that particular damning, from IHT editor-at-large Roger Cohen. 

A healthy future transatlantic relationship is not just a matter of national pride as with the Germans, a growing light within a confused-as-ever European palette. Both the US and Europe want to see a finished EU masterpiece -- not because it should be beautiful, but because it's vital to our common interests.

Lellouche Calls for EU National Guard, Belies Economic Backstory with Russia

In the wake of Russia's devastating forest fires, Pierre Lellouche, French minister for the EU, called this week for an EU-wide "crisis response force" to better deal with potential catastrophes. This begs a comparison to the National Guard, as the most similar body is known in the United States. 

The minister cited the Haiti earthquake disaster and last summer's fires in Greece as proof of the necessity in creating a federal EU crisis response detail to handle natural and other disasters as they erupt. (...)