Half half

Halbe-halbe was a political campaign in Austria in the late 1990s that called for men to participate equally in housework. It was initiated by the then Minister for Women, Helga Konrad , and in 1999 the obligation to balance the management of the common household was included in marriage and family law.

Since then, the expression “half-half” has been the slogan in Austria in questions of gender equality in employment and family burdens .

history

Whole men do half and half

The SPÖ women's minister, Helga Konrad, announced a legislative initiative in December 1996 that would oblige men by law to do half of the housework . It was planned that “both spouses should be equally responsible for housework, childcare and caring for relatives”, a socio-political demand based on the Scandinavian model. She also wanted to provide for the right to divorce for the woman if her husband did not do his share, until then only the man had the right to divorce if the woman did not clean.

The campaign itself ran under the slogan Whole Men Do Half-Half , lasted only about six weeks, and mainly comprised a few TV spots. It was especially geared towards the target group of young men, who wanted to pursue a more modern conception of marriages.

This resulted in a violent and broad public discourse. The question was discussed intensively in all public media , by all political and social partnership groups, as well as in private life. A number of outraged expressions of opinion on gender issues that were not expected in Austria in the approaching 21st century caused a sensation. It was also surprising at the time that women's associations also rejected the initiative.

The campaign, originally planned by the Minister for Women for three years, came to an early end in mid-January 1997 with the change of government Vranitzky - Klima and the recall of Helga Konrad.

Implementation of the legislative initiative

Konrad's successor, Barbara Prammer , pursued the legislative initiative with a different approach and reached a consensus based on social partnerships in which the concept of the common household, in which the spouses had to participate, was also extended to the economic aspects of household management .

In 1999, the task of sharing care work in partnership was included in the statutory matrimonial obligations . In particular, the regulation leaves the spouses open to structure their marriage in such a way that one earns the household income and the other leads it equally, but gives one of the partners the right to change something on an unsatisfactory basis.

Current legal situation

The Austrian marriage law requires the spouses principle driving a common household , the joint acquisition , and joint custody (the legitimate children § 90 para. 1-3 General Civil Code , Civil Code).

The equal proportion required in the legislative initiative can then be found in the reformed Section 91 (1) ABGB :

"The spouses should organize their marital partnership, especially housekeeping, employment, assistance and custody, taking into account each other and the well-being of the children, with the aim of achieving a fully balanced contribution."

In principle, the spouses are free to decide how they divide up the tasks in shaping their life together, the paragraph already contained the mandate to the spouses to shape their cohabitation "amicably", to which the objective of "full balance of the Contributions ”.

Paragraph 2 states that only one of the two partners can refer to this law “in the sense of the fair redistribution of the workload”:

“A spouse can opt out of an amicable arrangement if this is not opposed to an important concern of the other person or the children or, even if such a concern exists, if the spouse's personal reasons, especially his desire to take up gainful employment, are more important. In these cases, the spouses have to seek an agreement on the reorganization of the marital partnership. "

In the event of a divorce, it can in principle be assessed as fault to the detriment of a partner if he does not take part in the household, care work, child rearing or gainful employment. The specific interpretation of the content of the law is up to the divorce judge.

Social policy effect

Gender roles in the household today

The extent to which the legal requirement specifically affects everyday life has not yet been explicitly investigated.

In 2008/09, the workload of those in employment as well as housekeeping, childcare and other unpaid work was around 51 hours per week for women and 48 hours for men. The latest statistical study on time use in Austria in 2008/09 summarizes: “The dominant proportion of women doing housework shows that there is still a gender-specific division of labor. A comparison over time shows that, although the proportion of men who take part in housework has generally increased, women still do the majority of the work. [...] Also feeding, cuddling, learning with the child, supervising the child at home or in the playground and accompanying them to school or leisure events, all of these activities are carried out proportionally by more women than men. It is only when playing with the child that there is not such a significant difference between the sexes. An average of 13% of women and 10% of men take part here. "

The ratio of gainful employment and unpaid family work in a gender comparison, calculated over the entire resident population aged 18 and over, was in Austria in 2002:

	in h		in% of total working time (1)
	Women	Men	Women	Men	total
Unpaid work in the household in hours / week	20.0	4.74	44.2	13.5	23.5
Unpaid work for childcare in hours / week	8.0	2.5	17.6	7.0	31.3
Total hours / week of unpaid work	28.0	7.2	61.8	20.5	25.7
Paid employment in hours / week	17.3	27.9	38.2	79.5	62.0
Total working time in hours / week	45.2	35.1			77.7

⁽¹⁾Paid employment: women / men; unpaid work: men / women; Total working time: men / women.

The study on the use of time in 2008/09 shows for employed persons:

	Ø hours per week
	Women	Men	all in all
Professional Activities	39.0	48.2	44.2
Housekeeping	21.6	11.4	15.9
Child care and adult care	4.5	3.1	3.8

According to a study from 2005 ( AK Women’s Report) - using a different assessment basis - it was found that the workload of working women with children and (spouses) partners is 71.8 hours per week, of single working mothers 68.5 hours . From this it was concluded that “male partners do more housework than they do [women, note] for it” - but no explicit statistical evaluations are available for the reverse (rare) case of single fathers. Also about the extent to which the time spent at work and for family care rises in married people compared to single people, or the time spent with children compared to the time without children in the ratio of both genders, and no more precise analyzes are known of the conditions in retirement . However, a clearly proven gender comparison can be found again in the context of the double burden in couple households: non-employed fathers spend more than 2 ¼ hours less a day in housework and spend 1 ½ hours less time on social contacts and looking after the children than not -working mothers. The difference between employed men and women in couple households with children is accordingly only around 2 hours, respectively. 57 minutes.

There are also clear differences between the sexes:

• In the stratification in income and education - here, with increasing social status, the time expenditure for household decreases, for other family care increases, and overall inequality decreases (as is to be expected for "better" households and a higher standard of living )
• in the age distribution - the inequality is even greater among the older working people (40-59 years) than among the young, although the total time spent on the household also increases overall with increasing age (to what extent this is due to increasing age itself or to a changed way of life of the older couples or younger generations is unclear)
• between rural and urban areas - in rural areas the unequal distribution is still much more pronounced

Overall, however, the question of joint household management has generally become less explosive in the last decade, as in Austria on the one hand the forms of life forms alternative to marriage are increasing sharply, such as single parents , registered partnerships , blended families without a joint household, as well as the trend of Family breadwinner model for the dual breadwinner family continues: The actual employment rate of women with children in 2007 was 66.5% ( Lisbon target ) , and the rate of children cared for by the partner living in the apartment was only 48.8% ( Barcelona goals ) . On the other hand, due to more recent introductions - such as the shared parental leave period (" paternity leave ") and the paternity leave ("dad month") as early leave - and the increase in part-time work, there are tendencies that affect the relationship as well as the strict distribution of roles in employment to household participation keep moving. Reasons for gender inequality must now be looked for in different social and economic factors than in the 1990s, when the half-half campaign was running.

Further consequences

The main ideological point of discussion about the half-half campaign was the question, which has so far not been dealt with much in Austria, to what extent the legislature is allowed to interfere in highly private matters such as lifestyle. It has been shown that it also has a public-political dimension.

The relevant "half-half" paragraph itself - apart from its media impact - had no significant concrete social impact. Since then, however, the discourse has gone beyond questions of gender roles, and public opinion has also changed on other matters that take place within "one's own four walls", in particular on domestic violence and the upbringing and custody of children.

literature

• Hildegard Steger-Mauerhofer: Half-half. Utopia Gender Democracy? Milena Verlag, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-85286-156-2 .
• Eva Festl, Hedwig Lutz, Margit Schratzenstaller ; Klaus Grünberger, Christine Zulehner (employees); Hans Pitlik (expert opinion): Possible approaches to supporting families . On behalf of the Chamber for Workers and Employees for Vienna. 2009 / 077-1 / A / WIFO project number: 3708. Ed .: Austrian Institute for Economic Research [WIFO]. Vienna May 2009 ( beruferkammer.at [PDF] on family burden compensation in general).
• Janneke Plantenga: Unpaid work . In: European Commission, Directorate-General for Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs (Ed.): Women and Work . Report on existing investigations in the European Union. (On the European context of the question).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Half-half - utopia Gender democracy? Article on the broadcast context on Ö1. ORF, November 26, 2007, accessed on July 26, 2011 .  
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} According to Bettina Zehetner: Hildegard Steger-Mauerhofer: Halbe / Halbe - Utopia Gender democracy? Review. In: Frauenberatenfrauen.at. Women advising women, accessed July 29, 2011 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b} The latest available statistical data come from: Statistics Austria, Federal Ministry for Women and Public Service (publisher): Zeitvergabe 2008/09. An overview of gender differences . Final report from the Austrian Federal Statistical Office to the Federal Minister for Women and the Public Service (GZ: BKA-F140.300 / 0003-II / 1/2008). Vienna July 31, 2009 ( Frauen.bka.gv.at [PDF; accessed July 29, 2011] Adapted version, October 27, 2009). Frauen.bka.gv.at ( Memento of the original from August 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. However, the connection is not analyzed there. Older surveys can be found in a special survey as part of the 2002 microcensus , the previous time use survey was carried out in 1992. Information in Lit. Frauen.bka.gv.at ( Memento of the original from August 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
4. ↑ ^{a b} A more important comprehensive work is: Silvia Angelo, Ingrid Moritz, Sybille Pirklbauer, Christa Schlager, Iris Woltran, Sepp Zuckerstätter; Margit Epler, Gerlinde Hauer, Evelin Steiner (collaborators): AK Women's Report 1995–2005. Work - opportunities - money . Ed .: Chamber for workers and employees for Vienna. Vienna February 2006 ( femtech.at [PDF]).
5. ↑ There are more recent figures: Rudolf Karl Schipfer: Families in Numbers 2007 . (FiZ 2007). Statistical information on families in Austria and the EU. Ed .: Austrian Institute for Family Research at the University of Vienna. Vienna 2008 ( leavenetwork.univie.ac.at [PDF]). leavenetwork.univie.ac.at ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
6. ↑ Time use 2008/09 . 2.4 Paid, unpaid work , p. 35 .
7. ↑ Time use 2008/09 . Summary: housework - sharing in partnership? , S. 17 .
8. ↑ ^{a b} Time use 2008/09 . Summary: Childcare: A field of activity with many facets , p. 17 .
9. ↑ In the profile of the weekdays, the following picture emerges: "At the weekend the ratio of the proportions [between the sexes] even reverses, here around 11% of women and almost 14% of men play with children."
10. ^ Statistics Austria, 2003. In: Lit. WIFO (Ed.): Possible approaches to support families . Overview 13: Paid gainful employment and unpaid family work in Austria by gender, 2002 , p. 104 , p. 112 ( beruferkammer.at [PDF]).
11. ↑ Time use 2008/09 . Overview 2 Average number of hours per week by area of ​​activity (people aged 10 and over) and Figure 7 Paid / unpaid work per week , p. 36 .
12. ↑ Time use 2008/09 . Summary: Double burden: working women in couple households with children , p. 18 .
13. ↑ cf. Lit. WIFO (ed.): Possible approaches to support families . 8. Assessment of the direct effects of various reform options on the budget , p. 106 ff .
14. ↑ Time use 2008/09 . 6 housework , p. 52 .
15. ↑ see Women's Report 1995–2005 . Family benefits 1. Family structures , p. 49 ff .
16. ↑ FiZ 2007 . Table 34: Women with children under 15 years of age according to the characteristics of employment , especially reading example , p. 31 .
17. ↑ That is a concrete statistical value. The general calculation bases for the Lisbon goal are naturally quite controversial. Compare for example women's report 1995–2005 . Employment and unemployment of women in Austria 2. Employment of women Infobox 1: Has Austria achieved the Lisbon target? , S. 15 .
18. ↑ Schipfer: FiZ 2007 . Table 30: Childcare during working hours , column : partner living in the apartment , p. 21 .
19. ↑ cf. Women's report 1995–2005 . Family benefits 3. Childcare Infobox: EU sets “Barcelona targets” in childcare , p. 57 .
20. ↑ in the federal service since January 1, 2011, in Vienna since June 2001; Compare. Half-half is popular. In: diestandard.at. Der Standard, June 28, 2011, accessed July 29, 2011 . 
21. ↑ Groundbreaking further discussions took place before the campaign about the Olivia Pilhar case in 1995 regarding the freedom of parental choice of medical care, and then about the Kampusch case in 2006 regarding domestic violence, or today about non-European traditions in domestic life in the context of integration in Austria .