Reading a culture by its airplane passengers

Never before had I made a connection between the passengers that one meets on a route and cultural particularities. However, this time it was too obvious not to notice.

While flying from Zurich to Copenhagen via Düsseldorf, I couldn’t helped notice that 90% of the passengers in the plane were 30+ German males, all wearing a business casual outfit. Taking by their looks, they were all on business trips and not as tourists. And so I wondered: where are all the working women? Germany is a country with a proportional number of men and women, so why this phenomenon?

Then I remembered what I discussed with some German colleagues not too long ago. Apparently Germany is one of the men dominated countries in the EU. That is, 50% of women over 30 in Germany stay at home or have part time jobs. Furthermore, some of my German colleagues recall that they’ve always had their mom at home around and so did their friends.

However, I expect that with time the mentality has changed and now women consider having a family and a job. But, surprise.... Yesterday I talked to a female German colleague in her 20-ies, who told me some things which surprised me to say the least. She shared her view with me on this family and career issues. Apparently she doesn’t want a career in investment banking, or in other challenging businesses.

What is more, she would prefer to have a routine job and plenty of time than a challenging job but less time. This is not valid for the future 30+, but also for now. Moreover, she doesn’t imagine having a family with children and not being the entire day home with them. In other words, she intends not to work anymore when she has children.

If I compare this to the other countries, namely to Eastern European countries and Romania in particular, things are quite different. Romanian females have both a career and children and can still make it. The main reason for this situation is financial, but now it has become more a lifestyle.

All in all, it’s quite interesting to compare cultures on dimensions which are less obvious for outsiders.