I was supposed to talk about Germany, about the 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and about the women from the former GDR who have influenced and changed our reunified country. My colleague, Markus Decker, and I wrote a book about this topic, and I went on a lecture tour through Malaysia, Singapore and India to talk about it: about this topic, which I thought was something very 'German', and all its facets. The GDR. West Germany. The peaceful revolution. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the euphoria connected with this, which for many people soon led to disillusionment shortly after the reunification. The difficult years as East and West Germans slowly started to integrate.
All of this is far away from Asia, from India, Singapore and Malaysia, where they deal with other topics and priorities rather than the history of East and West Germany. At least, that’s what I thought. But I was wrong.
On my first evening, four women sat with me on the small stage at the German Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. All of them are well-known in Malaysia. Tehmina Kaoosji, the journalist, who acted as moderator throughout the evening, didn't really have to introduce any of them: Datin Paduka Marina Mahathir is a feminist as well as the daughter of the Prime Minister. Datuk Nicol David, on the other hand, was until recently the world's most successful squash player. Pauline Fan is an author, translator and artist. All of them are committed to equal rights and opportunities for women. What can I tell them about Germany, about the women from the East and the West, that would be relevant for them?
Visible and Invisible Barriers
According to a Study by the World Bank, everyday sexism is the reason why 500,000 qualified women do not work in Malaysia: because their husbands insist on a 'traditional' division of labour; because, generally speaking, it's the women who take care of the children, the old parents, and the household; because women are still often regarded as less suitable for occupying management positions.
Marina Mahathir talked about her battle against the injustice with which women in Malaysia are still confronted every day. And then it became clear to me just how close we are to each other, because such everyday sexism can be found everywhere. Even in Germany. Not just 30 years ago at the time of German reunification, but also still today.
And there are the visible and invisible barriers that prevent women from having even roughly the same opportunities as men, and which take such an incredible amount of energy to break down, because women continuously have to prove not only to others but also to themselves that they can achieve something.
Three days later, at the Writers' Festival in Singapore, held in a beautiful colonial building, the former seat of Parliament, I took part in a podium discussion entitled, 'Women, Economy and Power', where I repeated what I had said in Malaysia. I also said that this is the advantage that women from Eastern Germany have over those born in the West: they doubt less.
Because they were needed in the labour force, women in the GDR received support. Working was made as easy as possible for them. And from this there arose an (economic) independence, a self-awareness that was passed down from one generation to the next, with which the women from the former East Germany have influenced the reunified country over the past 30 years.
I was always surprised at how intensely the women listening to me and with whom I was allowed to have a discussion identified themselves with a topic that I believed to be so very 'German'.
On my trip through Malaysia, Singapore and India, the question often arose how women are perceived, what roles are assigned to them, and in what role they see themselves. And irrespective of the occasion, whether during my lecture at the National Library in Singapore, in the German School in Kuala Lumpur, the Goethe Institute in Mumbai or at the Singapore Writers' Festival: I was always surprised at how intensely the women listening to me and with whom I was allowed to have a discussion identified themselves with a topic that I believed to be so very 'German'.
The greatest surprise came in Pune. I travelled to India with all kinds of expectations, to a country that, from a Western point of view, is so full of clichés. In the media, it is often only noticed if elections are coming up or if it makes it into the news with a headline about gang rape. In the opinion of the general public, India is not a good place for a woman to be.
Before I gave my lecture about our book at the University of Pune, I was shown around by Swati Acharya, a professor at the Institute for Foreign Languages. She speaks German without any accent. I met her female colleagues, the professors for Russian, French and English, as well as the Head of the Institute of Journalism, before holding my lecture in front of approx. 50 interested people. Among them, I noticed three men.
'Patriarchy is everywhere,' the journalist, Tehmina Kaoosji, said on my first evening in Kuala Lumpur. 'To fight against it, feminism and the struggle for gender equality must also be everywhere.'
None of us can achieve this on their own. But luckily, we don't have to.