Männergarten

Bier-Esel inn in Cologne

The first Männergarten in Germany opened in Hamburg in 2003. At the Bleichenhof Mall, each Saturday men were entitled for a flat fee to two beers, a snack and access to male-oriented amusements: a model railway, handicrafts, men's magazines and sport broadcasts.[3]

The marketing concept was reported widely and received an ironic media response.[4][5] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an article entitled – "day care offer - have your man being taken care of per hour".[6]

There were several copies and follow-ups. In Cologne, the locally famous Bier-Esel Inn opened the first Männergarten in North Rhine-Westphalia on Saturdays in its biergarten. Die Welt commented under the title "Here you get rid of your husband".[7] Another restaurant in Hamburg offering churrascaria for coach tours introduced a special offer for such groups: while the women shop, men have fun in the Männergarten and on gender-specific excursions.[8][9]

Some German municipalities have Männergärten as temporary events. Obernzell in Bavaria offered a weißwurst breakfast, lunch, coffee and schafkopf, a Nagelbalken competition and an entertainment programme with a local association showing historical Zündapp mopeds.[10] On International Women's Day 2012, Xanten offered a men's day care programme in a computer shop. The same service, described as a Männerparkplatz, was offered in the Black Forest town of St. Georgen im Schwarzwald.[11]

French shopping malls have similar offers under the tag garderie pour hommes, for example the Galeries Lafayette in Paris[12] or temporarily in 2010 in Carré Sénart.[13]

IKEA tried the concept for four days in 2011 in a shop in Sydney. It meant to offer women a spending reprieve from "whining husbands" over Father's Day weekend. Echoing their Smaland daycare service for children, it was called Manland.[14]

The Week quoted complaints that reading books were not encouraged in Manland and criticizing the similarity to the childcare creche, since women were given a buzzer which went off after 30 minutes as a way to treat men like whining children. The offer would reinforce the notion that only women were responsible for home care.[14] As well it would overlook gay couples.[14]

Deutsche Welle translated Männergarten tongue in cheek as "adult daycare center" on its English website.[15] The use in satire has not stopped major stores like IKEA from providing such premises temporarily, the background being the growth of gender-specific marketing. Some municipalities and organisations provide a "men's programme" analogous to the First Ladies programmes for women during conferences and state events.[10]

Männerparkplätze or Männergärten seek to meet a special need for gender-specific marketing.[16][17] Martin Huber in the Swiss Tagesanzeiger referred to a survey which suggests that a quarter of couples have quarrels during shopping and a third have experienced losing sight of each other. Furthermore, Huber refers to female customer requests to IKEA asking in a tongue-in-cheek manner for a day-care center for their husbands analogous to the Småland provided for their children.[18] The Week was not sure whether Manland "had set retail shopping forward by three decades or set gender equality back by three decades."[14]

Kristof Magnusson's comedy Männerhort (Men's day care centre / creche) was a success with the Komödie Düsseldorf and is based on a man cave in a large department store. It deals with a similar problem as the commercial Männergarten concept, but limits access to three men at a time.[19]

• "Der abgegebene Mann" – portrait of the Hamburg Männergarten in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2 November 2003 (in German)