In Germany, “the shortage of qualified educators is the biggest obstacle to increasing women’s working hours”

Katharina Wrohlich, director of the Gender Economics research group at the German Institute for Economic Studies (DIW) in Berlin, points out that considerable progress has been made in childcare over the past twenty years.

Is the current labour shortage in Germany an opportunity to remove barriers to women’s employment in Germany, particularly those that affect mothers?

This is indeed an essential issue, but I am not very optimistic about a rapid improvement. The inadequacy of childcare facilities is not a political problem: most parties and economic federations have understood the importance of continuing to develop them to encourage women to work. The problem lies in the difficulties of practical implementation. It should be remembered that enormous progress has been made in the last twenty years in the West: in the mid-2000s, only 3% to 5% of children under 3 were looked after in daycare. Now, it is about one child in three. This policy of developing daycare has been, so to speak, a victim of its success: the demand for childcare has grown faster than the development of childcare provision. And we are reaching certain limits. The biggest current obstacle to increasing mothers’ working hours is the shortage of qualified educators.

Should we reform mini-jobs, these short-hour contracts exempt from social security contributions, which are often held by women?

Mini-jobs are indeed an area that could easily be tackled. They were set up in a context of mass unemployment, in 2005. There is no reason for the State to continue to massively subsidize these low-hour jobs, while the country is in a situation of labor shortage. This is all the more absurd since research has shown how these jobs can be professional dead ends for those who occupy them. It is easier to get out of unemployment than to move from a mini-job to a regular job. But the resistance of certain sectors, such as hotels and restaurants, means that the elimination of these contracts is not on the agenda. As for the family tax system that is disadvantageous for married women, a reform was recently announced by the government, to be implemented in 2030. It is a step in the right direction, but it will only have limited effects.

Statistics show that in Germany, women who have reduced their working hours to look after their children rarely return to full-time work once their children are grown up. Why?

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