BERLIN (AP) 鈥 Like many other young women living in communist East Germany, Solveig Leo thought nothing about juggling work and motherhood. The mother of two was able to preside over a large state-owned farm in the northeastern village of Banzkow because childcare was widely available.
Contrast that with Claudia Huth, a mother of five, who grew up in capitalist West Germany. Huth quit her job as a bank clerk when she was pregnant with her first child and led a life as a traditional housewife in the village of Egelsbach in Hesse, raising the kids and tending to her husband, who worked as a chemist.
Both Leo and Huth fulfilled roles that in many ways were typical for women in the vastly different political systems that governed Germany durings its decades of division following the country鈥檚 defeat in World War II in 1945.
As Germany celebrates the 35th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989 鈥 and the country鈥檚 reunification less than a year later on Oct. 3, 1990 鈥 many in Germany are reflecting on how women鈥檚 lives that have diverged so starkly under communism and capitalism have become much more similar again 鈥 though some differences remain even today.
鈥淚n West Germany, women 鈥 not all, but many 鈥 had to fight for their right to have a career,鈥 said Clara Marz, the curator of an exhibition about women in divided Germany for the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Germany.
Women in East Germany, meanwhile, often had jobs 鈥 though that was something that 鈥渢hey had been ordered from above to do,鈥 she added.
Built in 1961, the Wall stood for 28 years at the front line of the Cold War between the Americans and the Soviets. It was built by the communist regime to cut off East Germans from the supposed ideological contamination of the West and to stem the tide of people fleeing East Germany.
Today only a few stretches of the 156.4-kilometer (97.2-mile) barrier around the capitalist exclave of West Berlin remain, mostly as a tourist attraction.
鈥淎ll the heavy industry was in the west, there was nothing here,鈥 Leo, who is now 81 years old, said during a recent interview looking back at her life as a woman under communism. 鈥淓ast Germany had to pay war reparations to the Soviet Union. Women needed to work our own way out of that misery.鈥
By contrast, Leo said, women in the West didn't need to work because they were 鈥渟poiled by the Marshall Plan鈥 鈥 the United States鈥 generous reconstruction plan that poured billions of dollars into West Germany and other European countries after the war.
In capitalist West Germany, the economy recovered so quickly after the total devastation of WWII that people soon started talking of a Wirtschaftswunder, or 鈥渆conomic miracle,鈥 that brought them affluence and stability less than 10 years after the war.
That economic success, however, indirectly hampered women鈥檚 quest for equal rights. Most West German women stayed at home and were expected to take care of their household while their husbands worked. Religion, too, played a much bigger role than in atheist East Germany, confining women to traditional roles as caregivers of the family.
Mothers who tried to break out of these conventions and took on jobs were infamously decried as Rabenm眉tter, or uncaring moms who put work over family.
Not all West German women perceived their traditional roles as restrictive.
鈥淚 always had this idea to be with my children, because I loved being with them," said Huth, now 69. 鈥淚t never really occurred to me to go to work.鈥
More than three decades after Germany鈥檚 unification, a new generation of women is barely aware of the different lives their mothers and grandmothers led depending on which part of the country they lived in. For most, combining work and motherhood has also become the normal way of life.
Hannah Fiedler, an 18-year-old high school graduate from Berlin, said the fact that her family lived in East Germany during the decades of the country's division has no impact on her life today.
鈥淓ast or West 鈥 it's not even a topic in our family anymore,鈥 she said, as she sat on a bench in the capital's Mitte neighborhood, which marks the former course of the Berlin Wall in the then-divided city.
She also said that growing up, she had not experienced any disadvantages because she's female.
鈥淚'm white and privileged 鈥 for good or worse 鈥 I don't expect any problems when I enter the working world in the future,鈥 she said.
Some small differences between the formerly divided parts of Germany linger on. In the former East, 74% of women are working, compared to 71.5% in the West, according to a 2023 study by the Hans-B枚ckler-Stiftung foundation.
Childcare is also still more available in the former East than in the West.
In 2018, 57% of children under the age of 3 were looked after in a childcare facility in the eastern state of Saxony. That compares with 27% in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia and 44% in Hamburg and Bremen, according to Germany's Federal Statistical Office.
Germany as a whole trails behind some other European countries when it comes to gender equality.
Only 31.4% lawmakers in , compared to 41% in Belgium's parliament, 43.6% in Denmark, 45% in Norway and 45.6% in Sweden.
Nonetheless, Leo, the 81-year-old farmer from former East Germany, is optimistic that eventually women all over the country will have the same opportunities.
鈥淚 can鈥檛 imagine that there are any women who don鈥檛 like to be independent,鈥 she said.
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Jan M. Olsen contributed reporting from Copenhagen.
