The family-friendly civil service profession of teaching is mainly carried out by women in Germany and the Netherlands. But even in the civil service, where labour law structures encourage the combination of work and childcare, the latter still mainly rests on women’s shoulders. “[Childcare] is a reason for women to reduce hours, but it is apparently not as accepted for men, among employers,” Mrs. Eichler says. “My husband’s manager doesn't see any responsibility to let him work less and more of the hours from home, even when the crisis is over.”

 

Germany and the Netherlands have been suffering under a growing teacher shortage over the past years. According to forecasts by the Bertelsmann Foundation, there will be a shortage of at least 26,000 primary school teachers in Germany by 2025. In addition, by 2030 about 1950 teachers will be missing in other German school types, such as high schools and vocational schools, each year from now on. In the Netherlands, a much smaller country, official numbers state that the deficit is projected to rise from missing 2,322 full-time teachers in 2019 to a deficit of over 4,000 in 2023/2024.

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The deficit takes an enormous toll on the teachers that the countries do have. Simone van Geest, spokesperson for Dutch teachers’ union Algemene Onderwijsbond [General Education Association]: “Many teachers who are super motivated to do their work run into having too few colleagues. They need to split themselves in three to get all the work done.” Teachers have not kept quiet. The past years have been chock-full with protests - but adequate change is yet to come. If there is anything that needs to change, Van Geest thinks, it’s the pressure put on teachers, resulting in part-time work. Looking into numbers of part-time work, indeed it seems that many teachers have found this as a solution to the issue of too much pressure. This is the case especially in primary education, but taking a closer look shows an institutionalised problem that strays far away from Ms. Van Geest’s explanation.

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70 percent of teachers in Germany and 65 percent in the Netherlands are women and it is predominantly female teachers that have taken on a part-time job. In Germany, 53 percent of female teachers work part-time compared to 28 percent of their male colleagues, states the German Federal Statistical Office (DStatis). This gender divide is an observable phenomenon across multiple school types, from primary education to secondary schools. In the Netherlands, the difference is equally strong, as reported by the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), with 57 percent of females in elementary education working part-time, compared to 36 percent of their male counterparts. Ms. Fleischmann, who is also Deputy Federal Chairwoman of the Education and Training Association, puts this into context: "Yes, part-time leads to a shortage of teachers, because if all colleagues who are part-time worked full-time, then we would not have a shortage of teachers here in Bavaria. That means we have enough heads, but these heads - especially women's heads - have too few hours."

 

Kathleen Eichler works part-time for her children, because the same wasn’t deemed appropriate for her husband - by his manager. “There are no monetary reasons behind it for us, but whether it was possible to reduce working time in our professional areas as easily as possible,” she says.

 

In the German public sector, labour law structures are facilitating parental leave equally for both men and women. Still, parental leave mainly consists of materniy leave. The proportion of fathers staying at home is rising, but the majority of fathers do not. In 2018, 1.4 million mothers received parental benefits in Germany, while only 430,000 fathers did, according to the DStatis. Taking parental leave is much more common among women in the Netherlands too. Figures of the CBS show that of the women eligible for parental leave in 2009, 41 percent made use of it, compared to 19 percent of men.

 

A study by researchers from London’s Kingston University (2002) analysed the reasons behind pervasive part-time work in an equally female-dominated profession and interviewed nurses in the UK. According to the Royal College of Nursing, as of 2018, 33 percent of female nurses in the UK were working part-time, compared to 5 percent of their male colleagues. In the study, childcare was cited as the most common reason for the uptake of part-time work post founding a family: “The highest number of part-timers (...) were working part-time to accommodate domestic responsibilities, in particular, those associated with childcare.”

 

It was also mentioned that only a small number of male nurses work part-time, mainly to achieve a better quality of life. The study concluded that childcare is the most common reason for female nurses to work part-time and they’re doing it to a greater extent than their male counterparts. So how is parental leave structured for the UK’s National Health Service (NHS)? The answer is contradictory but at the same time traditionally one-sided. The researchers from Kingston University found that so-called ‘family-friendly’ policies continue to address family commitments as a woman’s issue. Hence, policies such as parental leave are leaving families no choice by targeting ‘family-friendly’ working benefits mostly at women. Similar will become clear for German and Dutch systems. This shows that policymakers are refraining from modifying the model, but instead are letting women modify their working habits to fit the legal side of childcare.

 

Families are doing the math, often coming to the conclusion that the female partner has to adjust in order to benefit from the policies. This is no different in the teaching profession: “Especially in primary schools, 90 percent of teachers are women. So, if I can somehow afford it because I'm not a single parent and I have a husband who earns relatively well, then these women go part-time. They also do that because many women work full-time while working part-time so to speak. With the pupils in school and children at home, they are fully occupied with their personal circumstances,” says Ms Fleischmann from the Bavarian Teachers’ Association.

 

The feminization of teaching also increases the part-time in teaching rate as many families decide to go by the method that creates the least hurdles. “I also know men who have reduced hours in teaching because it is easy to do it there. You just hand in the application and don't have to justify it," says Mrs Eichler.

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Even earlier in childcare, the decision between mother or father primarily taking care of the matter is also regulated by labour laws. “There is formally no difference between men and women in the public sector in terms of parental leave under the German law,” explains Helene Wildfeuer, the Chairwoman of the Women's Representation of the German Civil Servants Federation. This is not the case in the free economy however, where the great majority of German employees work - thus many partners of teachers. Traditional role models in society and among employers are certainly playing a role here.

 

The Emancipation Monitor of the CBS states that in 2016, almost half of men and one-third of women who do not (yet) have young children thought that women are better able to care for a small child than men. In addition, two-thirds of people found it ideal if a father works four or five days a week, while only 20 percent would be fine if the mother works those days.

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Similarly, tough hurdles for women to overcome this image lie in the constraining legal structures on parental leave, however. According to the Dutch government, pregnant employees are entitled to four to six weeks pregnancy leave before the due date and at least ten weeks maternity leave after childbirth, while the German Maternity Protection Act (MPA) assures mothers six weeks leave prior and eight weeks after birth. Fathers in both cases have one week to no statutory paternity leave entitlement by law. However, they can choose to take the same leave as the mother, which is when the government steps in for the employer to pay a certain amount of their original salary.

 

Yet, childcare doesn’t stop where maternity leave finishes. Therefore, many parents have to discuss different ways of working part-time to care for their children after school and kindergarten. In Germany, the entitlement to part-time work exists if you have been employed by a company with a minimum of 15 employees for at least six months and if there are no other important, operationally-related reasons against it. For Mr Eichler*, this was not so easily the case, as he works for a company with less employees. Here, the manager doesn’t have to agree to part-time due to the resulting staff shortage. "We had to negotiate the number of months during paternity leave already, and these weren’t paid either. My husband would like to spend more time at home,” Mrs Eichler explains.

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At this moment, parents will do the math. When one of them is a teacher working in the comparably family-friendly public sector, this calculation will most likely result in something like this: several months without pay in the free economy and the responsibility of one partner for the whole family are contrasted to the possibility to apply for parental leave in the teaching profession, to enjoy protection against dismissal and to continue to receive a large part of one’s salary. The support of a newly formed family continues in part-time teaching, where lessons in the mornings are easily combined with time at home in the afternoon.

 

Stef Wouters (28) and Chantal Wijnholds (24), who live in the town of Geleen in the Dutch province Limburg, are already calculating how to structure work in the future. Mr Wouters is a full-time substitute teacher at elementary school ‘De Kluis’, while his girlfriend works as a nurse at the Zuyderland hospital nearby. “We've talked about what we're going to do if we were to have kids at a later point in life,” Ms Wijnholds says. “The idea is that I would go back from 4 days a week to 3 or 3.5 days. Stef will continue to work full-time. I already do more household chores now, anyways,” she laughs. He adds: “Colleagues at school have told me that leave schemes are much more focused on women.” He also observed that when children come, it is almost always the women reducing hours. Ms Wijnholds confirms his observation as well as the nursing study: “In my sector too, mainly women are going down in their hours when a child is born.”

 

“Well, I hope dads take care of their kids too, not only moms,” joked Ms Van Geest of the Dutch General Education Association when interviewed about the causes behind the teacher shortage.

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However, the numbers seem to state otherwise. Although Dutch paternity leave arrangements are similar for both partners up until their kids are eight years old, it is often the mothers that take on the leave. Perhaps this is the case because of the pregnancy leave schemes, as Mr Wouters points out. After childbirth, fathers only get a very short time with their baby. Mothers, on the other hand, are - deservedly - granted quite a long period. It makes sense to keep caring for your child after that scheme ends as you’re already invested in it, which is when they start working part-time.

 

But does working part-time actually lead to a shortage? A study at the University of Pennsylvania (2009) examined what the reasons behind the teacher shortage in the field of mathematics and science are. The researchers concluded that the shortage resulted from the high teacher turnover in the field. Turnover might not be the same as part-time work; however, employers are definitely losing labour-power. The study found that the turnover could be explained by family reasons, for instance, pregnancy or child care - confirming the finding of the Kingston University study on nurses.

 

Adding the striking gender divide within primary education to the equation, this leads to disastrous results, with whopping amounts of women working part-time. A quick sum shows that for example in the Netherlands if part-time working elementary school teachers were to work one hour more per week, the teacher shortage would immediately be improved. Minister of Education, Culture and Science Ingrid van Engelshoven and Minister of Primary and Secondary Education and Media Arie Slob confirm this view in a written response to motions made in the House of Representatives. They write: “School boards are addressed to encourage more actively that teachers start working more with just a few part-time appointments. For example, by working three days a week instead of two, the teacher shortage can be greatly reduced.”

 

And that reduction would be great indeed. Part-time work in the educational sector is very high in the area as compared to other countries, says Daan Jansen, spokesperson for the governmental Education Inspectorate. “Although we haven’t investigated the effects of part-time work on teacher shortages, it is an easy sum to make: you need more teachers if many of them work part-time. However - as I recall it, the problem wouldn’t be solved even if all part-time workers started working full-time.” Looking at the disastrous numbers, however, making a difference would already aid the pupils enormously, with more lessons actually taking place.

 

The blaming finger shouldn’t be pointed at part-time working women, however. What lies behind this is a larger, institutionalized problem. As shown, childcare schemes in the Netherlands and Germany create a situation for families with young children in which making the choice of who will work less usually prefers the mother. A female-dominated profession like teaching has to endure the consequences, resulting in many teachers working part-time.

To solve the teacher shortage, more teachers would be needed - unless structural changes are made.

 

If childcare schemes were to change and address mothers and fathers equally - also in the German free economy sector - perhaps it would result in a more evenly divided situation where fathers also work part-time in order to take care of their children. This way, female teachers could increase their hours and the shortage would reach a less fatalistic outlook. Susanne Lin-Klitzing, Chairwoman of the German philological association, a teachers’ union for secondary schools, agrees with Mr Jansen’s estimation: “The increase in the hours of part-time workers is not enough to cover what we need. If all part-time staff were to be upgraded to full-time now, not all posts would be filled.”

 

The teacher shortage remains present. Ms Van Geest puts it in a current perspective: “Especially these days, the maximum is asked of teachers. You can see: teachers are going at it in full force, ‘everything for the children once more’. No one wants them to have a huge learning delay when they return to school. We will see that when the corona crisis ends, the discussion on how to solve the shortage will erupt once again - because we now see the results of not taking action earlier.” Perhaps, something so terrible as a global pandemic could actually help foster change, just as the increasing applications for full-time employment from female Bavarian teachers show. The Eichlers are trying to achieve even more balanced working habits, with Mr Eichler requesting to reduce his hours.

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Now that many fathers also have to work from home or lose their jobs, domestic responsibilities hang in the air and might be shifting in some families. Better late, than never, one could say.

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*The sources name was changed in the feature as she wishes to remain anonymous.