Engagement?
No volunteering please!
© OlgaPS / Adobe Stock
As if you didn’t have enough on your plate, nowadays it’s considered good form to be yourself to engage officially, but unpaid. Our columnist gets upset. Free.
A friend was looking forward to her sabbatical! Finally time out to travel, rest, reflect and to extinguish the smoldering burnout. Instead, she is now stressed with a bad conscience, because her social environment can hardly bear to see her idle: “Do you already know which volunteer position you will be involved in?” It’s more women who ask that. In order to then, without being asked, list where and how they are saving the world on a voluntary basis. I, too, constantly get moral offers on social media: “You want a job with meaning?” Yeah, would be a nice side benefit – but most of all I want a job that pays my living. You have to be able to afford unpaid part-time jobs as a social must-have, because they bring in nothing but praise and a maximum of 840 euros a year in voluntary work as a tax exemption.
It seems to me that calls for voluntary work are increasing wherever the state has withdrawn from its former obligations. Sweetened with praise, the expensive care is then outsourced. In the tradition of female “welfare care”, well-off wives in my environment still like to take on free jobs that would have been real jobs with real wage costs plus social security contributions without volunteers.
Commitment should not be forced
Don’t get me wrong: Of course, anyone who can and wants to should get involved! I respect everyone who – as is currently the case with the Ukraine aid – donates energy and free time. But please without coercion. It’s not a question of honor! And don’t women in particular already cope with an excess of unpaid care work anyway? The fact that, statistically, a little more men do voluntary work from middle age onwards is only surprising at first glance: they can afford it financially, and recognition is their hardest currency anyway. That’s why they seldom spread bread: “Men who do voluntary work are much more likely to do management and board positions as volunteers than women who do voluntary work,” the initiative informs Ehrenamt-Deutschland.org. Of course you can shine more – than invisible as unadmired at home with the family– and care work, which women do 52.4 percent more than men every day.
What annoys me – as in the case of my girlfriend – is the (im)pression that “good” women should always do more for others. Doing more and more jobs, planned as a free resource, for which capitalism has only contempt and the state has diligence cards instead of tax money.
Each a charity lady – no matter how exhausted she is herself. But self-care is also important. Stubbornness can also create meaning. The Federal Ministry of the Interior regards voluntary work as “essential for social cohesion, as well as for strengthening democratic values and attitudes”. Words are cheap.
Karina Luebke lives and works in Hamburg. Absolutely honorable – but without any office.