Too few daycare centers in the West?
2.5 million women only work mini-jobs
April 27, 2024, 7:57 a.m
More than four million women are in part-time employment. Most of them exclusively, i.e. without any other income. The geographical distribution is striking: eight times more women are affected in West Germany than in the East.
Around 4.3 million women in Germany work a mini-job – the majority of them without any further employment. This emerges from a response from the federal government to a small question from the Left in the Bundestag as well as figures from the Federal Employment Agency (BA). Accordingly, as of the end of September 2023, around 476,000 women in eastern Germany and around 3.8 million women in western Germany were marginally employed, i.e. had a mini-job.
Around 2.5 of the total 4.3 million mini-jobbers, or 58 percent, were only part-time workers. At 2.2 million, almost eight times as many women in the West have a mini-job as in the East (around 290,000). And this despite the fact that only five times as many people live there, as the Left Party emphasizes. According to the information, around 1.8 million women nationwide have mini-jobs as part-time jobs – 1.6 million in western and around 180,000 in eastern Germany.
Although the mini-job employment model is also growing in the east, it is much more widespread in western Germany, criticized the Left Party. The party sees the reason for this as being, among other things, a less developed childcare structure in the West. Mothers would therefore have to take on the care and could therefore not pursue employment subject to social insurance contributions.
“Goals are clearly being missed”
“The traffic light had set itself the goal of achieving equality between the sexes within this decade,” said the leader of the Left in the Bundestag, Heidi Reichinnek. In addition, it is the federal government’s constitutional mandate to create equal living conditions in East and West Germany. “These goals are clearly being missed,” criticized the left-wing politician.
What is necessary is a “comprehensive expansion of daycare places, the transfer of mini-jobs into employment subject to social security contributions and the abolition of spousal splitting.” This should enable women to participate in the labor market, thereby securing themselves financially and thus preventing poverty in old age.