Europe

Gonna post this as a reply here so I won't have to copy this 3 times. Also tagging ValiantDust@feddit.org 0x815@feddit.org Enkrod@feddit.org so they see this as well

The original article by the tagespiegel uses language that makes it explicit this is supposed to include men however their motivation for demanding this (equal) home office right is because women are disproportionally affected by the lack of a right to home office work. The marketscreener article has translated this quite badly imo.

As far as I know, men are not excluded (others may correct me if I am mistaken). The Greens may have said that exactly because women are more affected by this issue as you said, but I don't think men are excluded from the right. This would also violate the equality principle imho (but I am not a lawyer, so take this with a pinch of salt).

I might be missing some additional information but I don't think men are excluded. I think the Greens are just making an additional point how it's especially important to women. I haven't read anything that suggests only women should have the right to work from home.

The argument is that it's especially important for women, but everyone should get it. German law will not see this implemented for only one gender. They are making the argument about women working from home for two reasons:

1. Virtue Signaling to a base that is especially concerned with the systemic disadvantage for women. (In this case virtue signaling is not a bad thing, because it mobilizes voters)
2. Because the governing coalition is centre-left the Greens are framing it in a way to sell it to the conservative opposition. For years the conservatives have been arguing about how we have too few kids in Germany and how it's because women prioritize their career. So this is good framing to onboard some opposition votes in parliament.

At the risk of sounding controversial here's a rant tangentially related to that little sentence strip.

In order to not go extinct (long term) we need (on average and nowadays) somewhere between 2 and 3 children per woman across the entire world. Historically that was pretty "easy" (nothing about raising a child is easy) to achieve because:

• lack of birth control
• women not working

Now while the influence of the former is pretty clear on the birthrate how does the latter impact it? I mean all things considered the women were working before then already, just at home instead of at a workplace. Yesn't. When women entered the workforce something very crucial happened that I do not see talked about very often but that has very far reaching implications. The workforce almost doubled in a very short amount of time. Initially this didn't result in much of anything so for most families of the early emancipation the result of women entering the workforce was a massive extra income. Reminder: back then a single income was enough to feed a family (and it was not really hard to do so comfortably). However here's the problem that I rarely see talked about: the increase in available labor caused wages to stagnate while inflation started eating away at the "real" worth of those wages. So over time the situation went from:

• one adult working, one adult taking care of the home => able to sustain a family

to:

• one adult working full time, one adult working part time + taking care of the home (usually the woman) => able to sustain a family

  Note: see how the workload for women has already increased here, despite various equality movements' efforts the initial result was/is a higher workload for women?

to:

• two adults working full time with usually the woman doing all or almost all of the household chores => able to sustain a family

  Note: in an "ideal" work household chores should be split evenly but alas we don't live in fantasy land but reality and such is the situation of things

Notice how the overall workload in this household went from 2 full time jobs (1 work, 1 household) to 3 (2 work, 1 household)? Note: there is a debate to be had about the workload in a household, personally I would estimate it even above a full time job if you want the household well kept but the point doesn't materially change with household work weighing more

Imo the resulting added stress and discomfort is largely to blame for the falling birth rates in the west. Not any form of "culture" or "rat utopia" situation. Rather people are simply too overworked to have a family.

Which brings me back to the quoted sentence. This piece of garbage text is a symptom of the entire problem. Instead of making sure that one salary is enough to feed a family (again), whoever that one person in the relationship may be, they just keep piling up the work. Women not being able to reconcile work and family is not the problem, them having to do both in the first place is.