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Images - Gender Roles and Family Relationships in Upheaval
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1.   Training Course for Women (1962)
The GDR constitution of 1949 provided for legal equality between men and women; it explicitly repudiated regulations standing in the way of women’s emancipation and decreed that women had a right....
Training Course for Women (1962)
2.   Mother with Children in Front of a Walter Ulbricht Poster, East Berlin (1964)
The GDR officially propagated equality between men and women, but the division of labor between the sexes continued to be informed by traditional patriarchal conceptions of gender roles. Granted,....
Mother with Children in Front of a Walter Ulbricht Poster, East Berlin (1964)
3.   In the Laboratory (1967)
In the 1960s, women in both East and West Germany began to fight for equal pay and for the same career opportunities available to their male colleagues. This photograph shows a female laboratory....
In the Laboratory (1967)
4.   Nursery in Vetschau (1970)
The GDR built up a network of day nurseries and kindergartens so that both mothers and fathers would be able to work. In the day nurseries, which were overseen by the Ministry for Health, children....
Nursery in Vetschau (1970)
5.   Playing and Learning in a "Children's Collective" (1970)
To facilitate women’s entry into the workforce and ease the burdens of child-rearing, day-care centers and “children’s collectives” (the latter taking its inspiration from the socialist model) were....
Playing and Learning in a
6.   Conference on Equality for Women in the Workplace (1972)
This photograph was taken at a women's conference sponsored by the “Food-Consumption-Restaurant Union” [Gewerkschaft Nahrung-Genuss-Gaststätten]. The conference, which was held in Dortmund....
Conference on Equality for Women in the Workplace (1972)
7.   "Establish Abortion Clinics Here" (July 1, 1975)
In the early 1970s, demands to reform Paragraph 218, which criminalized all forms of abortion, emerged as the core issue in the women’s movement. The SPD-FDP coalition proposed a law allowing abortions....
8.   Emma (1977)
On January 26, 1977, the feminist magazine Emma made its debut. The first issue (featured here) sold 200,000 copies, but the magazine’s circulation soon fell to 90,000. Alice....
<i>Emma</i> (1977)
9.   Emma's Store (1978)
In the 1970s, the women’s movement strove to create a separate women’s culture. The goal was to find spaces in which women could escape male domination and oppression and operate freely. Numerous....
Emma's Store (1978)
10.   A Non-Traditional "Family" (1978)
By the 1970s, the commune movement of 1968 had spawned rural living communities, where multiple families....
A Non-Traditional
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