Protective Legislation in Germany
1900
Women in Industrial Life. The Transactions of the Industrial and Legislative Section of the International Congress of Women, London 1900
= The International Council of Women, Report of the Transactions of Second Quinquennial Meeting Held in London July 1899. Edited by the Countess of Aberdeen, 7 Bde., London 1900, Bd. 6, p. 36-40 :
SPECIAL LABOUR LEGISLATION
FOR WOMEN.
(B) THE ATTITUDE OF DIFFERENT
SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
[London,]GREAT HALL, ST MARTINS TOWN HALL
TUESDAY, JUNE 27, AFTERNOON.
Lady LAURA RIDDING in the Chair.
[A telegram was communicated to the meeting from Consceiller
Bernardino Machado, late Minister of Industries in Portugal,
expressing his regrets at being unable to be present, and conveying
his salutations and best wishes to the Congress.]
Protective Legislation in Germany.
Fraulein Salomon (Germany).
"By means of legislation the exact balance must be produced between a pair of scales, into one of which the power of wealth has thrown its sword."
These words of the well-known Swiss lawyer, Mr Bridel, have special importance, and the necessity to balance the scales is twofold, wherever the work of women is found in one of the scales.
The legislation of most manufacturing States has acknowledgcd this necessity in special laws for protecting working women, by means of which the States try to protect the life and health of women in their special capacity as women and as mothers of the future generations.
The motives which led to such measures in Germany (as in many other States) are to be looked for in the immense increase of women workers, which became, by the hurtful influence of industrial work upon the female organism, not only a danger to women but even to the State. In 1895 there were 11/2 million women working in German industry, that is 400,000 women more than in 1882. The nature of different trades, the kind of some industrial occupations, the state of health in which women work before. and after confinement, the length of work-time, night work, all these forms of women's work which endanger public health and public welfare, gave the initiative for special labour legislation, which historically succeeds the factory laws for children and precedes the labour legislation for adult men.
The legislation originates in the modern forms of production. The first attempts in Germany date from 1878; in its present from it is enacted from the first of April 1892.
The special laws for the protection of women extend in the main only to factories, and under certain conditions to workshops; the principal items (clauses) are:
The employment of women is prohibited for four weeks after confinement, and for the two following weeks, except with a medical certificate; the hours of work for women over 16 years may not exceed 11 hours a day, and on Saturdays and the days preceding a holiday 10 hours; night-work between 8.30 p.m. and 5.30 a.m. is interdicted, as is also underground work.
The "Bundesrat" (being the representatives of the federated governments) is invested with the power of prohibiting or issuing certain conditions concerning the employment of women for such branches of industry as are especially dangerous to health or morals. The "Bundesrat" has made occasional use of this privilege; different restrictions have been fixed for brick kilns, glass manufactories and others.
The factory inspectors of Germany generally go in for an enlargement of the special labour legislation for women, finding the effect of these attempts satisfactory for women as well as harmless for the development of industry.
The organised women-workers and their trade unions agitate likewise for a further improvement and exact performance of this legislation ; the civic women's movement, as far as it is represented by the National Council, also moves in favour of its further expansion.
In Parliament these claims have been represented energetically by the Social Democratic Party, amongst whom the movement of the working women is carried on; as far as the representatives of other political parties take a warm interest in and understand the reform demands on the part of the labouring classes, that is especially in the liberal parties, the claims for improvement of the labour legislation for women have been seconded. The Government also has recognised the necessity of regulating the conditions of labour through the State since 1890.
A peculiar movement, which is intimately connected with, or perhaps even produced by, the endeavours for special labour legislation for women, has been devised by the Centrum - a movement which aims at the complete interdiction of employment of married women in factories.
Unfortunately this demand, which sprang from the wish of withholding social equality from women, and restricting them to house and household work, found adherents in the ranks of wellmeaning social reformers, who in this way hope to oppose the hurtful influences which are connected with the industrial work of women.
This view of things, which was expressed with special emphasis at the International Congress for protective labour legislation in Turin 1897, must be protested against energetically and principally in the interest of the working women as an encroachment on their economical liberty.
Women of all classes must combine to reject this as well as any other attempt to keep working women out of the labour market, on the part of the State or of the workers, in consideration of competition or from social motives; for economic independence from men can alone procure social equality for women.
Such an interdiction would deprive married women of the possibility of economical independence or would drive them into the unprotected home industry with lower prices, longer hours and worse conditions. To turn them out of the factories means, in the economic standard of to-day - not to turn them back into the domestic sphere, because it does not prevent the motives from existing which cause the women to abandon home and children.
On that account such laws would only create worse conditions for women's labour; it would guarantee them exploitation instead of protection; it would bring forth decrease of marriages, increase of concubinage, and would ruin family life instead of strengthening it.
Though, on the one hand, such attempts and claims to limit their liberty of action are eagerly opposed by German women, they are, in spite of all their righteous struggles for independence, on the other hand convinced that by complete lack of law the self-dependence of women would not be secured, but the employers' liberty for taking the advantage of it for exploitation.
A strong movement to suppress special labour legislation for women would on that account hardly gain ground in Germany. Such feminine efforts would strongly be opposed by the organised women-workers as well as by all those representatives of' the women's movement, who have a keen knowledge of the conditions in which the women of the working classes work and live, because such claimants fully mistake the interest of the working women. We earnestly hope that also the protective legislation for adult men, which is recognised and carried out by our labour legislation (R. G. O.) from the first of June 1891, will be further developed; but we think that there is a great distinction between the wants of workmen and workwomen, the distinction that only by means of State protection the working women can be enabled to protect themselves, to organise themselves in like manner as the labouring men of the period of capitalistic evolution from the very beginning and when taking up the struggle for their standard of life.
On that account we believe in the necessity of special labour legislation for women, but we are convinced (and the experience of the last few years proved this belief) that the factory laws for women, especially the limitation of their factory (day, cannot fail to bring, with them, after a short time, a shortening of the hours of the adult men with whom they work as well.
Women will not he worked out of the labour market on account of such restrictions, because employers cannot spare them any more. Their peculiar skill in certain trades and occupations will compel the employers in many trades to manage their business according to the terms (conditions) which the law appoints for the employment of women. Moreover, such legislation will produce for the labouring classes what we must struggle to attain for all classes of humanity - a division of work according to sex on account of special qualities; it will put in place of a mechanical or organic division of work a division according to characters and constitutions! Also the sphere of industrial work has space for the peculiarities of both sexes, and we hope that special labour legislation for women is one of the means for securing influence for these peculiarities in daily life.
May happier and better periods improve the conditions of all women to such a degree that they have to endure no social distress. But we dare not wait for such a time in idleness, our task is pointed out to us by the present time; may a thorough insight guide us in the right way.
Alice Salomon, Women in Industrial Life. The Transactions of the Industrial and Legislative Section of the International Congress of Women, London 1900
Alice Salomon ...
