German Law was changed in 2009 (yes, this century) through an amendment to an old prohibition that banned woman to work in underground mines.
On March 25th, 2009 an amendment to the Federal Mining Act was made within the framework of the bureaucracy reduction aimed by the Federal Government, contained in the Relief for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses Act as seen here.
This amendment was made to lift the ban on the employment of women in underground mining that was set in the General Mining Law of the Prussian States in 1865.
After 1865, the ban was ratified by West Germany in 1954 through the Article 2 of
the International Work Organisation Treaty of 1935 that stated
“No female, whatever her age, shall be employed on underground work in any mine”
„Keine Frau, welchen Alters auch immer, soll unter Tage in einem Bergwerk
arbeiten.”
However, there is evidence of women working in underground mines even before 1865 as stated by the deutschlandfunkkultur.de in an interview with Dagmar Kift, Deputy Director of the Westphalian State Museum of Industrial Culture in Dortmund. Even, according to Kift, in the town of Oberschlesien, in 1895, mine owners strongly opposed to this woman work prohibition.
Even though to have a prohibition like that sounds really critical if we discuss woman rights, the ban was not that radical in reality either. Women could work and did work in mines and in underground mines during this ban period (up to 2009) but needed to present an special request to acquire an special permission for it.
Nowadays, Germany, as well as the European Union promote and support the development of women in all work fields through different social and legal innitiatives as the EU-Equality Regulation (Gleichstellungsregelung) or the innitiative New Quality of Work (Neue Qualität der Arbeit) of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (in german Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales – BMAS).
Women have indeed come a long way, but there is still much more to do…
WIM Germany 