Abstract: Equal employment policies are not strongly developed in Germany although affirmative action, for example, has been official policy in the American labor market for nearly 30 years. Similar policies in Germany have gained only recent and marginal support in former West-Germany and in post-unification Germany. This situation is especially surprising given the fact that the German state is stronger on social legislation, workers rights, regulation of the labor market and development of welfare policies than the laissez-faire American state. In order to explain this apparent paradox this paper outlines the two main equal employment policies in Germany: quotas and continued education. Those approaches to gender equality have been conceptualized in comparative research under the terms ‘affirmative action-model’ and the ‘expanding opportunities-model’.

An analysis of quota politics in Germany shows that this policy is applied in political parties but not in the labor market itself. Similarly, continued education and reintegration does not address women’s position in the labor market head-on but is directed at the integration of housewives and mothers, i.e. at women traditionally outside the labor market. Here women’s access to employment has been the focus, not legislation against persistent discrimination facing employed women through unequal pay, lagging promotions, lack of benefits, sexual harassment etc. It can, therefore, be concluded that the thrust of German equal employment policies relegates women’s demands either to the political parties or back to the individual woman.

Thus in Germany, the main equal employment policies are, strangely enough, not directed at the labor market and its corporatist structure but instead at the political parties on the one hand or at the welfare state on the other. The vested interests in the labor market itself, (i.e. business, the public sector and the unions) and their established institutional structures are not directly addressed but seem rather insulated from certain demands for more employment equity. Instead, gendered equity demands are mainly translated into quotas for the representation of very few women in political parties and into limited welfare measures for housewives or low-skilled women.

Pressure to institute equal employment policies have thus been transformed through the political opportunity structure and relegated to the margins of employment issues. Hence, ‘trickle down’–equal employment policies exemplify the persistence and continued relevance of class cleavage and its institutionalization in Germany as both an organizational and distributive filter. Accordingly, demands solely on behalf of gender are deflected and have little economic impact. 
 

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