Stable economies, punctuality and strong car brands, Germany is often compared to its northern neighbours. But differences between the two cultures abound…

---

Xander Brett

As in the UK, Scandinavia is admired by Germans as a social paradise. Germans spent a total of three million nights in Sweden in 2017 and fascination for all things Swedish got so strong it prompted officials to warn of German tourists stealing elk warning signs. In fact, the romantic view of Scandinavia is so widespread, there’s even a term for it: ‘Bullerbü-Syndrom’, promoted by a TV series called Inga Lindström that led to the idea of Germans wanting to be Scandinavian.

Differences, however, are plentiful. Germany may have a female chancellor, but female representation on company boards low. A report in 2017 showed that of the thirty members of Germany’s stock market, just 12.1 per cent of board members were women. Eleven of those companies didn’t have a single woman on their board. One estimate, by the Institute for Economic Research, says no more than 2.2 per cent of senior management jobs in the biggest German companies are taken by women. In Scandinavia, female representation in top level boards easily averages 40 per cent and each country has introduced quotas requiring set representation. Norway, for example, demands listed companies reserve at least 40 per cent of director seats for women, on pain of dissolution. In 2013, Angela Merkel opposed an EU proposal to introduce a 40 per cent quota on executive boards in Germany. Just over 30 per cent of seats in the German Bundestag are held by women, compared to just under half of seats in the Swedish Rikstag.

In Germany, non-working mothers are known as ‘rabenmütter’ or ‘raven mothers’. In Scandinavia, by contrast, parental leave is generous and shared between both father and mother. In Sweden, for example, parents are given 240 days leave. Ninety of those days are earmarked as a minimum for each parent.

---

---

“In Germany, non-working mothers are known as ‘rabenmütter’ or ‘raven mothers’. In Scandinavia, by contrast, parental leave is generous and shared between both father and mother..”

---

Germany, unlike Scandinavia, is perhaps not so homogeneous. Before the current waves of mass migration, Germany was home to thousands of Turkish guest workers (‘gastarbeiter’), brought in to fill a post-war labour shortage. Add to this the fact that Germany has only recently been reunified, and existed as one country for only seventy four tumultuous years before division. It becomes clear that, unlike Scandinavia, Germany is the sum of its parts.

Unlike monarchies such as Scandinavia or the UK, or republics like France or the United States, history has perhaps demanded there be no immediately recognisable figurehead in Germany.

---

This article is a Fika Online exclusive.

---