German Company's Videos Imagine Modern Women as Passive and Dependent

Screenshot from a video, showing how a women cooks the favorite meal for her husband. A scene that seems to belong to the 1950s.

Screenshot from one of the videos, showing how a women cooks her husband's favorite meal. A scene that seems to belong to the 1950s.

Women in Germany are outraged over one insurance company's videos explaining different types of policies, in which women are described as passive and naive — a role more in line with the expectations of the 1950s than 2015.

Birte Vogel writes on her blog Thea – Frauen in Sprache, Medien und Gesellschaft (Thea – Women in Language, Media and Society):

Die Rolle der Frau in den Augen der Alten Leipziger ist die der passiven Mutter und Tochter, des Mädchens, das selbst nicht Skateboard fährt, sondern den Jungen anhimmelt und ihn fotografiert, der gut situierten Ehefrau, die keinen Job hat und deshalb den lieben langen Tag am Gartenzaun stehen und tratschen kann, die keine Ahnung hat von Versicherungen, die sich gerne vom altväterlichen Gatten aufklären und belehren lässt und aus Sorge vor einer Scheidung gleich zurück an den Herd rennt, um dem Herrn etwas zu kochen. Eine Frau, die vollkommen abhängig ist vom Mann – wenn der sich scheiden lässt, bleibt ihr gar nichts mehr. Ganz klar: 50er Jahre.

According to the insurance company Alte Leipziger, the role of women is that of a passive mother and daughter, of a girl, who doesn't skateboard and adores and takes pictures of boys, of a wife, who doesn't have a job and has nothing else to do than to stand next to the garden fence all day chitchatting with her neighbour, who has no idea about insurance and doesn't mind being educated by her fatherly husband and who returns to the kitchen to cook him his favourite meal because she is worried over a divorce. A women who is completely dependent on her husband — if he wants a divorce, nothing will be left for her. This is definitely the 1950s.

Following the uproar, the company removed the videos. 

Sigi Lieb tweeted in response to the controversy, using the hashtag #aufgewacht (#wakeup):

#aufgewacht im Jahr 2015. Selten dummes Werbevideo stellt Frauen als dümmlich dienend und passiv dar: http://t.co/9xAjhi6P8t

— Sigi Lieb (@gespraechswert) March 15, 2015

#wakeup in the year 2015. Amazingly stupid commercial video depicts women as dumbly serving and passive.

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