Equal Opportunities Policies and the Management of Care in Germany

At European level, debate over measures to assist couples in reconciling employment and family life has focused mainly on issues of childcare. Policies concerned with caring for people of all ages are, however, of central importance for equal opportunities politics for a number of interacting reasons. Firstly, women perform most informal caring activities — childcare, care for disabled or older people — both within the family and for other close relatives. Secondly, the way in which society conceptualizes caring activities affects the status, income and social security rights of women. If informal care is unpaid, as is generally the case, it has a negative impact on women’s earnings and makes them dependent on financial support from a spouse or partner, other family members, or the state. If women invest long hours in informal care, their labour market participation is adversely affected. If they spend several years carrying out informal caring activities, they have problems reestablishing themselves in the labour market. If they have specialized in caring activities and family work while their partner was the main income earner, they may suffer disproportionately in the case of divorce. If no, or only limited, social rights are granted to informal carers, they are at a disadvantage in terms of entitlements to social security compared to people in paid employment. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.