Overview

Living and working in rural areas

Even in the "century of cities," people are not only concentrated in large cities, but remain anchored in rural areas. Settlement structures and living situations have changed fundamentally within just a few decades.

Municipal area reforms

The territorial and, in particular, the municipal reforms of the past decades have fundamentally changed villages and small towns in rural areas. Thousands of villages and quite a few smaller towns have lost their political and administrative ...

"Rural living conditions in transition 1952, 1972, 1993, 2012": a unique long-term study

Ten West German municipalities have been studied regularly since the 1950s, and four East German municipalities have supplemented the long-term study since 1993. Longitudinal analyses such as these are very rare in social research, because effort and ...

Thünen explains

Women in rural areas

Women are particularly underrepresented where the greatest levers for change lie: in leadership positions, in statistics, in the public sphere. This imbalance is even more pronounced in rural areas than in cities. The Thünen Institute provides data ...

The importance of women in agriculture

One third of the agricultural labour force are women. Only a few of them work in managerial positions. But the trend is growing: More and more women are choosing green professions and are active in farm management. Agricultural statistics provide ...

Women in honorary positions

Women in rural areas are increasingly involved in voluntary work - but too rarely in influential positions. These positions often fall to men. Gender-specific barriers must be reduced to enable women to participate more actively in decision-making ...

Women on local councils

Women's perspectives, experiences, needs and skills are insufficiently anchored in politics, and even more so in local politics. One reason for this is that women are significantly underrepresented in political office. But there are ways to change ...

Single parents in rural areas

Balancing work and family life, single parents are more often at risk of poverty. In rural areas, a lack of infrastructure is an additional challenge for them. A survey by the Thünen Institute sheds light on their situation.

Contribution of the Common Agricultural Policy to equality between women and men

The annual funding of the CAP Strategic Plan comprises around six billion euros. Women benefit less from these funds than men. There are initial efforts to change this, but there is still a long way to go.