Eastern women are more self-confident, better-educated and more mobile, recent studies show. They have children earlier and are more likely to work full time. More of them are happy with their looks and their sexuality, and fewer of them diet. If Western women earn 24 percent less than men, the pay gap in the East is a mere 6 percent (though overall levels of pay are lower).

Eastern women have made their mark: Chancellor Angela Merkel, a physicist, is from the East, as is Manuela Schwesig, the No.2 in the opposition Social Democratic Party. The most high-profile political talk show is run by Maybritt Illner, another Easterner, while actresses like Nadja Uhl and Nora Tschirner are among the most popular.

As Ms. Schwesig, 36, put it: “Eastern women are where Western women want to be.”

Jutta Allmendiger, a West German sociologist and author of “Women on the March,” a survey on young German women’s attitudes, said “women in the East are more holistic,” and “combine their children and their careers and their sexuality in a completely matter-or-fact way.”

“West German women wobble,” she said. “Eastern women have no fear.”

When the Cold War split Germany in two, the country became a living experiment in social engineering. East and West had the same history — a history in which women principally raised children and kept the home according to the mantra “kinder, küche, kirche,” or “children, kitchen, church.”

Four decades of radically different socialization led to two very different sets of attitudes, illustrating how politics can shape gender relations.