East German Women Are Heading West

And Neo-Nazi parties are courting the men left behind
By J. Kelman,  Newser User
Posted Jun 1, 2007 5:11 PM CDT
East German Women Are Heading West
A neo-Nazi takes part in a demonstration   (Getty Images)

Young, educated women are fleeing eastern Germany—and Neo-Nazi parties are flourishing in the vacuum  they leave behind. One-and-a-half million people, two-thirds of them women, have left left the economically stagnant east since the mid-1990s, a new study shows.

Radical, right-wing parties parties prey on what the study's authors call "a new, male-dominated underclass," unmarried, underemployed, and susceptible to the neo-Nazi message.  And their foothold may be difficult to reverse: high unemployment keeps women from returning, and 100,000 eastern babies have already been born in the west. (More Germany stories.)

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