Lieber Gleich Berechtigt als Später!: Comparing Women’s Rights in the United States and Germany

Neither a century of formal political rights nor more than 50 years of equal pay and employment opportunity legislation have rendered American or German women socially equal to male citizens. A legal philosophy qua Staatsräson grounded in a concept of positive rights, sooner seen in the Federal Republic than in the United States, appears to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for producing reforms guaranteeing social equality between the sexes. While the USA initiated a “roll-back” of women’s welfare rights commencing with the Reagan years, Hartz IV reforms have only recently rendered paid employment a condition for receiving state assistance among disadvantaged women as mothers and care-takers in Germany. Both systems have ignored the intersectionality and cumulative impact of unequal social welfare treatment that block women’s access to full citizenship