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The second Frankfurt Career Study was conducted in 2017 in East and West Germany to analyze the impact of motherhood on female professional advancement in the specific national context of Germany. In addition, this study aims to present a unique perspective of the similarities and dissimilarities between the Western and Eastern parts of the country.

The research is presented as a three-stage statistical approach based on quantitative data generated from a survey conducted among 2,130 working mothers. In the first step, the authors performed a multiple correspondence analysis to explore the relationships between important categorical variables. Using the object scores obtained in the first step, we then ran a hierarchical cluster analysis, followed by the third and last step: using the k-means clustering method to partition the survey respondents into groups.

The authors found that working mothers in Germany are distributed according to four clusters mainly described by demographics and orientation toward work. East Germany has been found as a more egalitarian context than West Germany with respect to family system arrangements. However, the upper bound of the sample in West Germany presented an atypical female breadwinner model in high-performance households.

The authors want to contribute to previous investigations on the topic by providing a more comprehensive view of the phenomenon, especially comparing the two different family systems and social norms from the Eastern and Western parts of the country. The authors ask whether and how career perspectives and female labor supply are influenced by drivers such as work–family conflict determinants, working mothers demographics, partner support and employer support.