Ideological indoctrination aside, it may suprise some people here that the german GDR had 92% working women, many of them in technical and scientific fields and many having three children. One of the things they did right here is offering proper childcare widely around typical work time windows. The society and often husbands too felt responsible for children, it was not seen as "a mother's thing" like many in this thread seem to do. This has implications up until today, with several prominent and well-educated female politicians and public figures being GDR-born. It was not all perfect (housework and childcare was implicitly still seen as a mother's thing, mothers could request special housework days, sometimes questionable things like full-week kindergardens and so on), but much better than what young people face today when moving to west-german states (where the jobs for educated people can be found) where old-fashioned mindsets and kindergardens closing at 4pm and at random full days throughout the month persist. A single generation of children born among both men and women working in decent jobs did this.

Angela Merkel is one of these GDR children, she studied physics and has a PhD in quantum chemistry. She is childless, but her mother - despite being very old now - is still teaching English because she has never stopped being passionate about her chosen profession (I know an interview where Merkel says that her mothers work attitude always inspired her). Well, she never had to throw her education away because society or her husband expected it either. Another well-known politician I can think of here is Sarah Wagenknecht. Peter Scholze who just won the Fields medal was born in Dresden (growing up in Berlin) - his father is a physicist and his mother is a computer scientist working as network technician.