—Are you okay?
—No. I’m a woman, I’ll manage…
These two exchanged lines between me and Mima a few days ago hit right at the core of some things I’ve been thinking about lately, during quarantine.
A few days before this conversation, a friend of mine shared a post on Facebook about a job posting for a professor of New Testament Studies at the Catholic Faculty of the University of Bonn. Like every job posting in Germany, it ended with: “The goal is to increase the number of women in sectors where they are underrepresented and to especially support their careers. Qualified women are therefore explicitly encouraged to apply for this position.”
Sounds great, right? I thought so too — but hold on, there’s more. Three sentences earlier, it said the professorship would be awarded to a priest.
If it were a Protestant faculty, a woman could theoretically get the position, since women can be ordained there. But since it’s Catholic, that’s unfortunately not possible even in your dreams.
I don’t want to get into church matters here, because this is really just a perfect, general example of how things work in the business world.
This example reveals the pervasive hypocrisy of job postings. Every employer knows there aren’t enough women in senior, “mid-senior,” or even decent positions — and I’m not just talking about professorships at universities.
The law forces them to state in (almost) every job posting that women are highly welcome and have some kind of advantage over men.
But the law’s reach ends at the wording of the posting — after that, it’s still the law of the strongest, meaning the law of the man’s world. The form is fulfilled, but not applied.
Clearly, we’ve reached a certain point after a hundred years of fighting for women’s rights — but often that point turns out to be little more than a pretty lie.
Women are still assessed on whether they’ve had children, whether they will, whether their kids are still young, and how much time and attention that will take away from work.
That’s confirmed not only by the words and experiences of our friends and acquaintances, but by Mima’s experience too.
I have to mention something important: anyone who’s finished a master’s or PhD in Germany has a very hard time finding a job that matches their level of education, because such jobs are rare — partly because they’re well paid but also heavily taxed. You can imagine how much harder it is for a foreigner to find one.
If you come from a so-called “third world” country (Serbia, Bosnia, North Macedonia, Georgia, etc.), to get a work visa or residence permit, you have to find a job that exactly matches what you studied and your level of education — because the state won’t let you “take” a job from its own citizens.
The rules are even stricter in Switzerland, for example, where the employer has to give a valid reason for hiring you specifically instead of a Swiss or EU citizen. But let me get back on track…
In Germany, more often than not, you’re not even told your application wasn’t considered. At least that’s been Mima’s experience so far. Maybe the most striking example related to her job search (after successfully finishing her master’s here) was the most recent one.
A position opened up at our university that matched both Mima’s field and her level of education.
As it happened, I’d already worked with the person directly in charge of that job posting, so I called him — purely to try to draw his attention to Mima’s application (not to try to persuade or bribe him in any way), because many people had told us that you only have a real shot at such a position if you know someone and can reach out to them personally.
While I was subtly trying to point out to our acquaintance that Mima was planning to apply, he asked me — why wouldn’t I apply for the position myself?
That can be read a thousand different ways, but only one comes to my mind.
None of this bothers me because I’m some kind of great crusader for justice (though Mima often accuses me of being ideologically close to communism, because the idea of equality of any kind is deeply important to how I see the world) — it bothers me, first and foremost, for very selfish reasons.
It bothers me because my wife is in that position today, and because my daughter might be in the same boots tomorrow.
It bothers me because I have a sister, a niece, a mother, a mother-in-law, a sister-in-law…
I want all these people I love to at least have a fair shot at supporting themselves through their own work and effort in this world.
I don’t want any favoritism or looking the other way when they come in for a job interview — I just want no one to look down on them simply because they’re women.
Gender shouldn’t define them — their skill and education should.
I want them to have equal chances from the start, not to live in a world where “this is a man’s world” is just accepted as fact.
And I always wonder — do all those employers who have it easy not have at least one woman in their own lives whom they love, and because of whom they shouldn’t treat other women with contempt?
Isn’t it time to turn the wheel in a different direction?
I know things aren’t great for you, women, and that you’ll manage, as my Mima said at the start of this piece — but I hope you won’t have to keep struggling through tests like this for much longer.
I hope you’re not written off in job applications just because of your gender, or because you weren’t destined to be ordained. I’m sure there are brilliant women who could be brilliant lecturers on the New Testament. They just need to be given the chance! These are terrible things we need to manage to change, for our children’s sake.
But first, basic solidarity is essential — both from men, and that famous solidarity among women! Progress has been made, but the wheels still need pushing forward if we want to reach an acceptable situation.
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