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East German women flee for western jobs
Associated Press ^ | September 24, 2007 | Kirsten Grieshaber

Posted on 09/24/2007 2:07:56 PM PDT by george76

Silke Gawenda's hometown has its charms -- ramparts and timbered houses from the Middle Ages, and quiet streets lined with linden trees.

A little too quiet for the bright 18-year-old, who is counting the days until high school graduation so she can leave Wittstock for college in the more prosperous west -- joining an unprecedented exodus of young women from what used to be communist East Germany.

"Wittstock is so dull, I just want to get out of here," said the 18-year-old with a blond ponytail and blue eyes, who wants to study graphic design. "There's no future here for me -- no jobs, no night life and no way to get a good education."

More than 60 towns in the east with populations above 5,000 have fewer than 80 women per 100 men... That compares to a ratio of 51.1 percent women to 48.9 percent men for all of Germany.

Why women? That's a topic of intense discussion. Steffen Kroehnert, the sociologist who did the report, points to female-headed households and a lack of male role models in education.

"The guys in rural East Germany are real mama's boys,"...

More than 1.5 million people have left eastern Germany since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 -- most of them to the former West Germany. In the early days more men left, but that changed quickly after German unification. Since then, two-thirds of those leaving were female...

(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Germany; Government
KEYWORDS: germany; needpics; picsplease; uselesswithoutpics; wittstock
communism did not work either.

.

1 posted on 09/24/2007 2:08:04 PM PDT by george76
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To: george76
"The guys in rural East Germany are real mama's boys,"...

They must be infatuated with the nanny state, which allowed communism to flourish.

2 posted on 09/24/2007 2:10:34 PM PDT by DrDavid (Is this a rhetorical question?)
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To: george76

Gawenda - I wonder if that is a Sorbian or Wendish name?


3 posted on 09/24/2007 2:10:38 PM PDT by wideawake (Why is it that so many self-proclaimed "Constitutionalists" know so little about the Constitution?)
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To: george76

Gentlemen of FR, surely we can find a position for this young lady and her friends!


4 posted on 09/24/2007 2:11:27 PM PDT by null and void (<---- Awake and filled with a terrible resolve...)
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To: DrDavid
They must be infatuated with the nanny state, which allowed communism to flourish

Other way around

5 posted on 09/24/2007 2:12:23 PM PDT by Regulator
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To: null and void

I knew a guy who married an au pair from Poland.


6 posted on 09/24/2007 2:13:11 PM PDT by Perdogg (Join the NCAA basketball thread - Freemail me)
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To: Regulator
They must be infatuated with the nanny state, which allowed communism to flourish

Other way around

The relationship between those that want to be cared for by the State and the State the pretends to care is symbiotic.

The ones who weren't mama's boys left in the first wave.

7 posted on 09/24/2007 2:16:38 PM PDT by DrDavid (Is this a rhetorical question?)
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To: george76

Pics?


8 posted on 09/24/2007 2:16:40 PM PDT by doctor noe
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To: doctor noe; colorado tanker; AnAmericanMother

High school student Silke Gawenda smiles as her friends look on in Wittstock, Germany, Thursday, June 16, 2007. Gawenda's hometown has its charm, ramparts and timbered houses from the Middle Ages, and quiet streets lined with linden trees. A little too quiet for the bright 18-year-old, who is counting the days until high school graduation so she can leave Wittstock for college in the more prosperous west, joining an unprecedented exodus of young women from what used to be communist East Germany


9 posted on 09/24/2007 2:35:30 PM PDT by george76 (Ward Churchill : Fake Indian, Fake Scholarship, and Fake Art)
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To: george76

There’s nothing unusual about high school kids thinking that the grass is greener anywhere else but home. I’m a little surprised that it’s mostly women, though.

Are they attracted by the deranged feminazism of the West?

One hopes it’s something else.


10 posted on 09/24/2007 2:51:08 PM PDT by irv
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To: george76

I was in East Germany in 1983 and you can’t begin to describe the oppression


11 posted on 09/24/2007 2:51:42 PM PDT by SoCalPol (Duncan Hunter '08 Tough on WOT & Illegals)
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To: SoCalPol
I was in former East Germany in 1993 and found it to be a dingy, rubbish excuse for a Germany. Don't know how it might have improved since. ExEast Berlin looked fairly decent at the time.
12 posted on 09/24/2007 2:57:13 PM PDT by ExGeeEye (I've been waiting since 11/04/79 to do something about Iran.)
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To: irv

Maybe they think they’ll find better prospects and mates abroad.


13 posted on 09/24/2007 3:19:42 PM PDT by tbw2 (Science fiction with real science - "Humanity's Edge" by Tamara Wilhite)
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To: george76

It’s amazing (to me anyway) to think that the current h.s. seniors were born around the time that the wall came down — from here on forward it will be entire generations that never knew life under the communist tyranny.....


14 posted on 09/24/2007 3:22:29 PM PDT by Enchante (Democrat terror-fighting motto: "bleat, cheat, retreat & defeat, just suck on liberal teat")
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To: george76
Cute! I’d say she has a future in the West. :-))
15 posted on 09/24/2007 3:22:59 PM PDT by colorado tanker (I'm unmoderated - just ask Bill O'Reilly)
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To: tbw2
Maybe they think they’ll find better prospects and mates abroad.

Apparently. But why would the women think that so much more than the men? In the article, the women claim the men are basically useless. But women have been claiming that about their local men for thousands of years. It doesn't really explain the dichotomy.

16 posted on 09/24/2007 5:23:51 PM PDT by irv
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To: irv
Ummmmm, because a man can always find a use for a woman???

*ducking and running for cover*

17 posted on 09/24/2007 5:28:51 PM PDT by null and void (<---- Awake and filled with a terrible resolve...)
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To: Perdogg

Two golddiggers?

< };^)


18 posted on 09/24/2007 6:33:32 PM PDT by Erasmus (My simplifying explanation had the disconcerting side effect of making the subject incomprehensible.)
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To: george76

So how is this much different than bored young ladies living in Conway, New Hampshire or Elko, Nevada fleeing in droves to Los Angeles or New York City.

Young ladies seem to get bored in nothing places and want to go where the action is. So do young men.

These German women aren’t so rare. That want action, fun, money and opportunity.


19 posted on 09/24/2007 7:14:02 PM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free
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