Anne Wendel eventually decided to reduce her working week to 26 hours out of necessity. The young woman, who prefers not to give her real name, is the mother of two children under the age of 10. Born in 1985 in East Germany, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, she always considered women’s work to be self-evident. But in the rural and conservative region of Oldenburg (Lower Saxony), where she moved two years ago to follow her husband, she discovered that the opening hours of schools and nurseries were extremely limited: from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the latest to 3 p.m. A graduate in early childhood education, she aspired to a position of responsibility in a nursery school, but had to give up: “They only accepted full-time applications. With the limitations of the schools here, this was not feasible.”
For the past two years, she has also had to deal with the problems of a lack of teaching staff, which has definitely discouraged her from increasing her working hours. “In the first year, it often happened that the nursery announced in the morning that it could not take my son because there was a shortage of teachers.” At her daughter’s school, things are hardly better. “Every morning she doesn’t know if her schedule will be respected, there are too many absent teachers. Classes are grouped together, teachers have to improvise constantly. This is a great stress for her.”
Anne looks back fondly on her former life in Dresden (East), where daycare centres reliably accommodated her children until 5 or 6 p.m., with great flexibility. “It allowed me to organize myself, whatever my schedule. Here in the region many women decide to stay at home for three years. I often wonder what single mothers do, or those whose work involves being there late in the evening. And whether women can really make their life wishes come true.”
Economic lethargy
Anne’s situation is no exception on the other side of the Rhine. Indeed, many nurseries, kindergartens and schools, which were previously only open in the morning, have extended their opening hours over the past thirty years, allowing more and more women to participate in the labour market. The activity rate of women between 15 and 64 years of age has thus increased significantly, from 57% in 1991 to 73.6% in 2023, a very high rate in international comparison. But the disadvantage is significant: 50% of working women work part-time, compared to 13% of men, one of the highest gaps in the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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