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You would have to be Brazilian. Or South African, or even Indonesian. Because women from these countries are the most optimistic in the world when it comes to balancing work and family, as shown by a new study from Thomson Reuters and the Rockefeller Foundation. A total of 9,500 women from the 20 most important industrial and emerging countries were surveyed for this.
And the result is clear: In places where women can rely on family support for childcare or where state childcare is particularly well-developed, women rate their chances of balancing family and career as particularly good. Germany and Japan form the sad bottom line: Only 17% of Japanese women and 21% of German women consider it possible to successfully combine career and family. With a noticeable gap, the third worst position is held by Great Britain, where nonetheless 29%, almost every third woman, find this feasible. Even with the reverse question of whether women find it difficult to balance career and family, Germany is a negative leader: 37% of German women think that their career ends with the birth of a child.
According to scientists at the Max Planck Institute, the reasons for this predicament, in addition to the lack of childcare facilities for German mothers, include the lack of family-friendliness of employers, a conservative attitude towards role distribution, especially in West Germany, and the presence culture with long working days when employees aspire to responsible positions. Experts suggest that flexible working hours, more all-day schools, and an expansion of daycare offerings, as well as moving away from the classic role model of women working part-time or not at all, would provide relief. Because in Germany, few families have local, free childcare—and this is likely to remain the case for the foreseeable future.
Sources: http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL5N11V2R820151012
