According to an article in the NYTimes, the East German Communist regime crafted a new, better kind of woman, and today’s unified Germany should learn lessons from the totalitarian police state that was finally toppled along with the Berlin Wall at the end of the Cold War.

Today, women who grew up in Communist East Germany are supposedly more confident, mobile and happier with themselves than those from the West. Additionally, they make almost as much money as men on average, and are far more likely to be working mothers.

According to one working woman quoted in the article, the East was wrong to do such things as chain people to radiators in solitary confinement and force students to spy on each other, but it was better for women all the same. She says that the position of women was far better before the Communist state failed, but now Germany in general is headed in the “right direction” (i.e. becoming more like the Communist regime)[.]