Hot campaign issue in Germany: working moms

As Germany's skilled-labor shortage deepens, moving women up the corporate ladder is becoming an economic necessity.

"The economy can't afford anymore to overlook women," says Barbara David, who heads Commerzbank's diversity department.

Germany faces its greatest shortage of skilled workers in decades. Last year, the Schröder government instituted so-called "green card" programs to make it easier for engineers from countries like India to work in Germany. And opening the gates to more qualified workers is the central goal of a groundbreaking new immigration law. Although immigration can help, it isn't enough to solve the problems, in part because the bulk of immigration consists of low-skilled foreigners.

"Immigration isn't the cure," says Achim Dercks of the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Berlin. "It's only part of the solution."

"What is needed in Germany is a radically new way of thinking," says Eric Thode, a researcher at the Bertelsmann Foundation, a nonprofit organization based near Frankfurt that does research and analysis on German society. "We need to stop thinking women are meant for part-time jobs only and take it for granted that women should hold top positions."

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only 15.7 percent of German women with children under 6 work full time, but twice as many would like to. In France, for example, 40 percent of women with small children work full time, and the figure rises to more than half in Sweden. And, on the average, French and Swedish women have more children than do German women.

It is the absence of child care options that explains, in large part, the differences. According to a new study on the German labor market by the Bertelsmann Foundation, only 10 percent of German children under 3 have a spot in some form of day care, compared with 64 percent of Danish toddlers, 52 percent in the US and 29 percent of French toddlers.

Gerhard Schröder, the Social Democratic chancellor, who is running for reelection in September, has pledged, if elected, to spend $4 billion over four years to turn a quarter of the nation's schools into all-day institutions and open more day-care facilities. His coalition partners, the Greens, advocate making kindergarten free for all.

Edmund Stoiber, Schröder's conservative rival, pledges to provide more direct benefits to families. Even Stoiber's party, traditionally the stodgiest in its views toward a woman's role, is talking for the first time about the need to reconcile family life and work. Reflecting the country's new emphasis on childbearing, Stoiber has also voiced an open-mindedness toward less traditional models of family, saying that his choice for family minister would be an unmarried mother.

But how the new child-oriented initiatives would be paid for is unclear, especially since many child care and school issues fall under the jurisdiction of local municipalities.

Prompted by recent rulings by Germany's high court urging more child-friendly public policies, the government recently made several changes. Every child in Germany, regardless of origin and family income, is now entitled to a kindergarten spot. Families get tax breaks for child-related expenses. Federal judges ruled last year that, because families with children contribute more toward maintaining the number of taxpayers than do the childless, they should should pay less into the long-term nursing care program.

Some private German companies have tried to make it easier for women with children to work. Commerzbank, for example, has an emergency kindergarten in case parents need to bring their children to the office.

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