2020年经济学人 德国妈妈的工作(2)

Policy seems to play a powerful role in explaining the collapse¹ in full-time² employment in the east. Despite some recent changes, the policies of unified³ Germany, like those of the FRG, still assume that women are wives and mothers first. Joint⁴ taxation⁵ of married couples, free co-insurance for spouses⁶ and tax breaks for "mini jobs", or low-hours contracts, probably did little to encourage women in the west to up their hours, and put those in the east off full-time work.

“政策”似乎在解释东德全职就业人数下降方面发挥了重要作用。尽管最近发生了一些变化，但统一后的德国和德国联邦政府的政策一样，仍然假设女性首先应该是妻子和母亲。对已婚夫妇的联合征税、对配偶的免费共同保险、以及对“迷你工作”或低工时合同的税收减免，可能对鼓励西德妇女延长工作时间并使东德妇女放弃全职工作没有什么帮助。

Attitudes, meanwhile, may help explain part of the lasting⁷ hours gap between east and west: 30 years after unification, eastern women are still more likely to approve of full-time working mums. This chimes with earlier findings that east Germans are more likely to have an egalitarian view of the roles of the sexes.

与此同时，“态度”可能是解释东西德之间长期存在工作时长差距的部分原因：在统一30年之后，东德女性仍然更倾向于认可全职妈妈。这与早期的发现相一致，即东德人可能更倾向于用平等的眼光看待性别角色。

Attitudes have also changed over time, though. Strikingly, women born after 1975 in both the east and west are more likely to disapprove⁸ of mothers in full-time work than older ones, putting paid to the idea that younger women are keener on work. Perhaps women's views are shaped by the policies they face. Katharina Wrohlich, one of the report's authors, also suspects that the shift marks a rejection⁹ by younger women of both the dual-earner model of the GDR and the single-earner model of the FRG. "Instead the younger generation seems to be aspiring¹⁰ to the one-and-a-half jobs model," she says—a preference that policy may need to respond to in turn.

不过，随着时间的推移，人们的态度也发生了变化。值得注意的是，不管是在东德还是西德，1975之后出生的女性比年长的女性更有可能否认全职妈妈，这推翻了年轻女性更热衷于工作的观点，或许女性的观点是由她们所面临的政策决定的。凯瑟琳·若珂是该报告的作者之一，她也怀疑这种转变标志着年轻女性对德意志民主共和国的双职工模式和德意志联邦共和国的单职工模式的排斥。她说：“相反，年轻一代似乎热衷于半工作模式。”这一偏好可能需要相应的政策予以回应。

The unification "experiment" hardly took place in laboratory conditions. Many women migrated from east to west. The regions differ in many other respects—incomes per head are lower in the east, for instance—that also affect the number of hours women work. But the episode still says something about the power of policy and the endurance of attitudes, long after walls are torn down.

这场统一“实验”的基地并不是在实验室。其中也有许多从东德迁移到西德的女性。这些地区在其他许多方面也存在差异——例如，东德地区的人均收入较低——这也影响了女性的工作时长。不过，即便高墙已倒，这段插曲仍彰显了政策的力量和态度的耐力。

1 collapse   

vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷

参考例句：

• The country's economy is on the verge of collapse.国家的经济已到了崩溃的边缘。
• The engineer made a complete diagnosis of the bridge's collapse.工程师对桥的倒塌做了一次彻底的调查分析。

2 full-time   

adj.满工作日的或工作周的，全时间的

参考例句：

• A full-time job may be too much for her.全天工作她恐怕吃不消。
• I don't know how she copes with looking after her family and doing a full-time job.既要照顾家庭又要全天工作，我不知道她是如何对付的。

3 unified   

(unify 的过去式和过去分词)； 统一的； 统一标准的； 一元化的

参考例句：

• The teacher unified the answer of her pupil with hers. 老师核对了学生的答案。
• The First Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 B.C. 秦始皇于公元前221年统一中国。

4 joint   

adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合

参考例句：

• I had a bad fall,which put my shoulder out of joint.我重重地摔了一跤，肩膀脫臼了。
• We wrote a letter in joint names.我们联名写了封信。

5 taxation   

n.征税，税收，税金

参考例句：

• He made a number of simplifications in the taxation system.他在税制上作了一些简化。
• The increase of taxation is an important fiscal policy.增税是一项重要的财政政策。

6 spouses   

n.配偶，夫或妻( spouse的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Jobs are available for spouses on campus and in the community. 校园里和社区里有配偶可做的工作。 来自辞典例句
• An astonishing number of spouses-most particularly in the upper-income brackets-have no close notion of their husbands'paychecks. 相当大一部分妇女——特别在高收入阶层——并不很了解他们丈夫的薪金。 来自辞典例句

7 lasting   

adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持

参考例句：

• The lasting war debased the value of the dollar.持久的战争使美元贬值。
• We hope for a lasting settlement of all these troubles.我们希望这些纠纷能获得永久的解决。

8 disapprove   

v.不赞成，不同意，不批准

参考例句：

• I quite disapprove of his behaviour.我很不赞同他的行为。
• She wants to train for the theatre but her parents disapprove.她想训练自己做戏剧演员，但她的父母不赞成。

9 rejection   

n.拒绝，被拒，抛弃，被弃

参考例句：

• He decided not to approach her for fear of rejection.他因怕遭拒绝决定不再去找她。
• The rejection plunged her into the dark depths of despair.遭到拒绝使她陷入了绝望的深渊。

10 aspiring   

adj.有志气的；有抱负的；高耸的v.渴望；追求

参考例句：

• Aspiring musicians need hours of practice every day. 想当音乐家就要每天练许多小时。
• He came from an aspiring working-class background. 他出身于有抱负的工人阶级家庭。 来自辞典例句