Accounting for roughly 52 per cent of Western citizens and 53 per cent of the Eastern residents, women comprise a majority of the New German population whose fundamental rights and roles have been redefined by the breathtaking merger of two formerly adversarial systems. The last 40 years have effected an unquestionable transformation of the socio-political roles and economic rights commonly ascribed to women in the former Federal Republic, as well as in the now defunct German Democratic Republic. Yet neither state had witnessed a transformation so complete by 1989 as to render the status of the citizeness equal to that of her male counterpart.