Rabenmutter (West Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland)

Rabenmutter 🇩🇪 🇦🇹 🇨🇭
Location: Germany, Austria, German-speaking Switzerland
Definition: A mother combining family and career, regarded as underperforming in both; a bad, egoistic mother
Keywords: Germany – Austria – Switzerland – EU – Europe – Gender – Employment – Tradition
Author: Elena Denisova-Schmidt and Lena Nicolas-Kryzhko
Affiliation: University of St. Gallen (HSG), Switzerland

By Elena Denisova-Schmidt, University of St. Gallen (HSG), Switzerland and Lena Nicolas-Kryzhko, Independent researcher

Rabenmutter (lit. raven mother) is a German expression used to denote a bad mother, who does not take sufficient care of her children, often because she is combining family with work. This derogatory term is used for a ‘loveless, hard-hearted mother who neglects her children’ or for an egoistic woman who refuses to have children due to economic or emotional circumstances (Duden 2020). According to an old German belief, the raven cares little for its offspring and pushes them out of the nest when it no longer wants to feed them. The term reinforces the traditional division of roles where women are supposed to dedicate themselves to the family while men are the breadwinners. Even in present-day German-speaking Europe, highly educated women stop working or work part-time once they have children in order to provide ‘sufficient’ care to their families. The reasons underlying the perception that combining work and motherhood is bad are deeply rooted in the historical, social, and economic context.

The traditional model has been dominant in the German-speaking Europe and many other countries for centuries and is grounded in the household hierarchy, the distribution of functions and the allocation of resources. Consider the rules of behavior in the family suggested by Adolph Freiherr Knigge (1752–1796) in his famous Knigge (1788) or the Russian Domostroi from the sixteenth century. Whereas boys went to school and were educated and trained to earn a living for the family, girls stayed at home to help with the household chores and take care of their younger brothers and sisters. The twentieth century has brought important changes in the perceptions of gender equality, access to higher education, and voting rights, but not as evenly across Europe as expected. The 1971 reform of voting rights for women in Switzerland, a country where cantons determine their own legislation reached its smallest canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden only in 1990 by a decision of the Swiss Supreme Court (116 Ia 359, 27 November 1990). Until 1984, married women in Switzerland were supposed to bring a written statement from their husbands allowing them to work. The progressive reforms aimed at ensuring equality between men and women were not implemented at the same pace across Europe. Whereas the representation of men and women in higher education is almost equal (women slightly outnumber men in German-speaking countries), in professional life, especially in top management positions and academia, men significantly outnumber women.

While the majority of countries, including German-speaking Europe, managed to reach high level of equality in higher education, the inequality in professional life persists. The main reason for such a reversal in numbers reflects the inability of modern societies to reconcile women’s professional ambitions with their family duties. Women focus (or are expected to by different stakeholders) on their families more than on their careers. Often, women do not receive enough support from their families, the state, their employers, and society to continue with their careers and their professional growth (Mühling and Schwarze 2011, Giudici and Schumacher 2017, Bund et. al. 2019). According to a recent study, the gender gap in lifetime earnings for people currently in their mid-30s will reach 45 percent in western Germany and 40 percent in eastern Germany. The experts argue that part-time employment and childcare are the main reasons for this difference (Bönke et. al. 2020).

German chancellor Angela Merkel, a strong role model who has been called the most powerful woman in the world (cf. Forbes Ranking 2019) but who is also often called Mutti (a diminutive form of mother), has a reputation in Germany for being a Rabenmutter despite the fact that she has no children. In Merkel’s first electoral campaign, her rival Gerhard Schröder (b. 1944) and his spouse, Doris Schröder-Köpf, claimed that she could not support or even understand the problems of working moms because she is not one of them. Merkel is neither a ‘Mutter' nor a Rabenmutter, but ‘only’ a politician (Poelchau, 2010). Another senior German female politician, Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission has also been called a Rabenmutter. In contrast to Merkel, von der Leyen has seven children. She started her political career in her mid-40s and was attacked by the media and society as a Rabenmutter. The Rabenmutter rhetoric appears across the political spectrum. When Andrea Nahles gave birth while serving as the first chairwoman of the Social Democratic Party, she went back to work after eight weeks of maternity leave and was publicly scolded as a Rabenmutter as a result. She made a public statement explaining that her child was well taken care of and that she was able to combine both maternity and a political career (Jakat 2010). It has been noted that Nahles must have felt pressure to return to work, as positions such as Minister of Labor and Social Affairs demand presence (Brigitte 2010). Leading female politicians who gave birth during their terms have often been smeared as Rabenmutter by their male colleagues (Schmidt 2014).

Businesswomen also endure the double pressure of public disapproval and demands of the job on the other. A 2019 survey found that ‘only 8.7 percent of senior managers in Germany’s 160 listed companies were women’ and only five of the biggest companies in Germany had a female chief executive (EY survey citied in Boulton and Chazan 2019). The slow change in female representation means that it ‘would take until 2048 for a third of management roles to be occupied by women’ (Boulton and Chazan 2019). The same is true in academia: a 2015 study by the European Commission concluded that women remain underrepresented in university faculties in Germany (17.3%), Austria (20.3%), as well as Switzerland (19.3%) (She Figures 2015).

Experts argue that, in addition to the organizational structures that neglect the needs of female employees, many working mothers still suffer from ‘the double whammy of unhelpful taxation and educational systems’ (Boulton and Chazan 2019). The German tax system that used to disadvantage married women with children now has provisions for daycare opportunities for preschool children and after-school options for schoolchildren and youth. The media highlight successful role models for women in the workplace, which should significantly reduce the stigma of a Rabenmutter.

The stigmatization of the reversal of traditional gender roles is a global problem. There are similar terms that refer to absent mothers in other languages. In Russian-speaking communities, these women are called ‘cuckoos’ (kukushki), the birds that allegedly leave their eggs in other birds’ nests to hatch. In the United States, the term ‘deadbeat mother’ refers to mothers refusing to provide financial supports and fulfill other obligations for their children. The problems of working mothers – childcare and equal pay – as well as some other women’s rights issues were addressed by all of the Democratic candidates for the 2020 US presidential election (Connley, 2019). In Japan, female students face discrimination when they are denied entrance to medical schools in Japan because ‘many female students who graduate end up leaving the actual medical practice to give birth and raise children’ (BBC 2018)

References

BBC. 2018. Japan medical schools 'rigged women's results', 14 December, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46568975

Boulton. L., and Chazan, G. 2019. ‘Rabenmutter!’ How German business culture still sidelines women’, Financial Times, 17 October: https://www.ft.com/content/1ea8686e-d551-11e9-8d46-8def889b4137

Bönke, T., Glaubitz, R., Göbler, K., Harnack, A., Pape, A. and M. Wetter. 2020. Wer gewinnt? Wer verliert? Die Entwicklung und Prognose von Lebenserwerbseinkommen in Deutschland. Bertelsmann Stiftung.

Brigitte, 2010. Andrea Nahles: Für Abgeordnete gibt's keine Elternzeit, 18 November, https://www.brigitte.de/aktuell/gesellschaft/interview--andrea-nahles---fuer-abgeordnete-gibt-s-keine-elternzeit--10223986.html

Bund, K., Geisler, A., Kunze, A. and S. Venohr. 2019. Was Frauen im Job erleben. 14. August, https://www.zeit.de/2019/34/diskriminierung-arbeitsplatz-frauen-job-sexismus-gleichberechtigung

Connley, C. 2019. Abortion, equal pay, family leave: Here are all the women’s rights policies proposed by 2020 candidates so far, CNBC, 24 June, https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/24/all-the-womens-rights-policies-proposed-by-2020-candidates-so-far.html

Duden. 2020. Rabenmutter. https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Rabenmutter

Forbes Ranking. 2019. The World's 100 Most Powerful Women. https://www.forbes.com/power-women/list/

Giudici, F. & R. Schumacher. 2017. Erwerbstätigkeit von Müttern in der Schweiz: Entwicklung und individuelle Faktoren. Social Change in Switzerland, N 10.

Jakat, L. 2010. SPD: Karrierekämpfe: Andrea Nahles - schwanger und Furcht um den Job. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 November, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/spd-karrierekaempfe-andrea-nahles-schwanger-und-angst-um-den-job-1.1024626

Mühling, T. and Schwarze, J. (EDs.). 2011. Lebensbedingungen von Familien in Deutschland, Schweden und Frankreich. Ein familienpolitischer Vergleich. Leverkusen: Barbara Budrich.

Poelchau, N. 2010. Die 'Rabenmutter'. Süddeutsche, 17 May, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/aus-dem-sz-magazin-die-rabenmutter-1.254876

Schmidt, S. 2014. Vereinbarkeit von politischer Karriere und Familie untersucht anhand einer Umfrage von Mitgliedern des Deutschen Bundestages der 16. Legislaturperiode. Berlin: FU Berlin.

She Figures. 2015. Brussels: EU. https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/9b0d1e52-41ab-11e6-af30-01aa75ed71a1/language-en/format-PDF/source-search