Germany - Class
Socioeconomic background plays a key role in determining which academic and professional opportunities are available in Germany — and how much discrimination a person will face in their career. Talent and commitment often aren't enough on their own. A potential employee would also have to understand the hidden codes of the company elite. That includes knowing how to behave, which clothes to wear, the right hobbies to have and how to communicate such that doors to the executive floor open.
Germans aren’t inherently class obsessed, but Germans will still resort to class based language. At work, people will divide employees into “White-collar” and “blue collar” workers, which can seem antiquated terminology to native-English speakers. The status and desirability of certain class identities is slightly different though. In Germany, being middle-class is considered the standard because Germany has a larger than average middle-class. It’s essentially the norm, so much so that politicians will actively promote their middle-class status.
Most of the workforce is employed in the services sector. West Germany completed the transition from an industrial economy to one dominated by the services sector in the 1970s, and by the late 1980s this sector employed two-thirds of the workforce. In contrast, when the Berlin Wall fell, East Germany still had not made this transition. Because more of the workforce was engaged in industry and agriculture than in the services sector, its socioeconomic structure resembled that of West Germany in 1965.
Rainer Geissler, a German sociologist, has examined his country's social structure in light of the economic changes that have taken place in the postwar era. Because of the growth of the services sector and the doubling of state employees since 1950, he has discarded earlier divisions of German society into an elite class, middle class, and worker class, with a small services class consisting of employees of all levels. He has replaced this division with a more nuanced model that better reflects these postwar changes. As the economy of the new Länder is incorporated into the western economy, its much simpler social structure (elite, self-employed, salaried employees, and workers) will come to resemble that of the old Lander .
According to Geissler, at the end of the 1980s West Germany's largest group (28 percent of the population) was an educated salaried middle class, employed either in the services sector or in the manufacturing sector as educated, white-collar employees. Some members of this group earned very high salaries; others earned skilled blue-collar wages. This professional class has expanded at the expense of the old middle class, which amounted to only 7 percent of the population at the end of the 1980s. A less educated segment of the services sector, or white-collar employee sector, amounted to 9 percent of the population. Geissler divided the working class into three groups: an elite of the best-trained and best-paid workers (12 percent); skilled workers (18 percent), about 5 percent of whom are foreigners; and unskilled workers (15 percent), about 25 percent of whom are foreigners. A portion of this last group live below the poverty line. Farmers and their families make up 6 percent of the population. At the top of his model of the social structure, Geissler posits an elite of less than 1 percent.
Only 8% of German millionaires worked their way to their wealth, most simply inherit their money on the death of a parent or rich relatives. Furthermore, there are numerous “old money” families, many who are descendants of medieval banking empires or landed gentry. However, unlike the “old money” families of Britain, Germany’s aristocracy generally prefer to remain out of the headlines and away from positions of influence in government. These super rich German citizens keep an incredibly low profile, actively remaining out of the public eye, often claiming that the negative perception of the rich in Germany is a major factor in remaining in very splendid isolation.
Socioeconomic background plays a key role in determining which academic and professional opportunities are available in Germany — and how much discrimination a person will face in their career. In many states, children find themselves in one of three levels of secondary education; Gymnasium, Realschule and Mittelschule. Discrimination starts early in Germany. More than 80% of children whose parents went to university go to 'Gymnasium,' the most advanced type of German secondary schools, usually a precursor to university. For children from families with less formal education, it's not even half. A child's educational path often correlates to that of their parents. For example, 79 out of 100 school children with college-educated parents will go on to study at a university, compared with just 27 out of 100 whose parents did not attend university.
People who grow up in precarious financial situations often can't count on support from their parents if they run into financial problems. Sometimes, they're the ones supporting their parents. This means not everyone can afford to do unpaid internships, for example. Those from privileged social classes also often have better professional connections, putting them in a better position to land these coveted internships in the first place. People who choose to study also have to consider whether they're ready to take on student debt. This is a more difficult decision for people with a lower socioeconomic background. People from poor families have to take disproportionately more risks and do more to move up than those born into the middle class or college-educated middle class.
To prevent discrimination on the basis of social origin, it's necessary to do more than support those who are affected; obstacles also need to be removed. Most people probably don't feel that they discriminate against others from a different social milieu. However, studies show that people tend to favor those who are similar to themselves — a phenomenon known as unconscious bias. Discrimination based on social class can be harder to recognize than discrimination due to age, skin color or if they or their parents migrated to Germany, for example. That makes it all the more important that people in educational institutions and human resource departments are trained to recognize bias and critically examine their own actions.
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