The scene: Budapest; May, 1989. I’m traveling through the Continent with my older, cooler cousin Leslie, eurorailing around in 2nd class compartments, drinking in the culture, sleeping in youth hostels and occasionally (and accidentally) train stations. It’s my first trip abroad, my first time away from parental supervision.
“Should we go to Germany? Check out Checkpoint Charlie? See the Berlin Wall?”
“Nah, they’re not going anywhere.”
Lesson: Always exercise caution when trusting the political analysis of teenagers.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the communism’s last gasp in Europe – November 9 is the date considered to be the fall of the Berlin Wall (although that’s more of a metaphor; the 9th was the date that the gates were opened to allow free passage). In the lead-up to that date, there’s a proliferation of news stories about the event. Of special note today is U.K. newspaper The Times’s lengthy look at how women have fared since the wall came tumbling down. Roger Boyes, the paper’s Berlin correspondent, notes that after the fall: “In a short time, women in Central and Eastern Europe found themselves beached by history. East Germans were merged into a supremely capitalist all-German state in which women were paid, on average, 23 per cent less then men. Within months of the fall of the Wall, 21 per cent of women were unemployed, there was a 25 per cent drop in marriages, 12 per cent fewer children were born. That was followed by a massive migration of East German women westwards in search of work. The result: ageing men-only rural communities, soaring divorce rates and stranded children.”
Boyes does point out that at no point does anyone yearn for the days shrouded by the Iron Curtain, and there’s hope for the future, as the setbacks women experienced were just growing pains of the adjustment to a new political system. Still, it’s a little mind-bending, and depressing, to ponder that women may have been better off under a notoriously oppressive regime.
- Rebecca Caldwell
