Icon: enlarge
FDP leader Christian Lindner
Photo: Kay Nietfeld / dpa
Wolfgang Kubicki can no longer hear the accusation.
The assessment that his party has a "women's problem" is simply wrong.
The party police have prepared an answer for such cases, which should prove that at least in his home country things are not as bad as the critics of the FDP keep saying.
From Schleswig-Holstein, two of the three FDP members in the Bundestag are female, he recently told SPIEGEL.
But a look at Kubikicki's regional association, which he chaired for a long time, shows that there is still room for improvement here, too.
The northernmost FDP association has around 24 percent female members.
After all, it is above the proportion of women in the FDP federal party: only 21.6 percent are achieved here.
The FDP will not shed the image of the men's party anytime soon.
The messages that were recently sent out do their part - even if there are many reasons for this.
At the federal party conference on September 19 in Berlin, FDP general secretary Linda Teuteberg had to vacate her post prematurely, and the Rhineland-Palatinate Vice-Prime Minister and Minister of Economics, Volker Wissing, should move up.
Christian Lindner chose Teuteberg one and a half years ago, also considering the low percentage of women, for the office and preferred her to his long-term companion Johannes Vogel from North Rhine-Westphalia.
The FDP leader wanted to set an example - but Teuteberg disappointed in her position.
Lindner is now rebuilding the FDP leadership in parts, he wants to focus on economic issues.
In the Corona times, Wissing is supposed to attract more attention than Teuteberg, who barely got through in the media with her statements.
"I assume that the proportion of women at the party congress in May will not be less than it is now."
FDP leader Christian Lindner
The reorganization at the top will also continue at the party congress in May next year, where the governing bodies will be re-elected as scheduled.
The Hamburg FDP leader and vice-president Katja Suding recently announced her withdrawal: She does not want to run again in 2021, neither for the Bundestag nor for her party offices.
Among members in Hamburg, she was criticized for losing the state election this year - the FDP failed because of the five percent hurdle.
Her decision, she told the "Bild" newspaper, had matured months ago.
The 44-year-old, who once became active in politics in the era of Guido Westerwelle, had brought the FDP back from the extra-parliamentary opposition to the citizenry in 2011 - with an election campaign tailored to her person.
Now the deliberations begin as to who could succeed Suding in the party leadership in May next year.
Possibly a woman again, it is said internally. Until then, Suding is part of the three-man vice team behind the chairman alongside Nicola Beer and Kubicki.
In 2021, with a view to the federal election campaign, a lot is likely to shift in the personnel table.
FDP leader Lindner sees the problem of female representation.
"I assume that the proportion of women at the party conference in May will not be less than it is now," he told SPIEGEL.
The problem of male dominance has been a part of the FDP and Lindner for a long time; he himself launched an internal analysis two years ago.
The party even had its deficit attested in black and white through a study it commissioned.
Although it appeared in 2018, it is still largely valid today.
"In contrast to the other parties, the proportion of women among party members in the FDP has deteriorated in recent years," wrote the political scientist Ina E. Bieber.
According to the author, the FDP has - after AfD and CSU - the third lowest proportion of women in membership.
Little has changed in the findings.
On the contrary: the latest data from the FDP federal headquarters are even worse.
Accordingly, the proportion of women at the end of December 2019 was 21.6 percent.
Two years ago it was 22.6 percent.
It's a gradual decline - for comparison: in 1987 there were 25 percent women among the Liberals.
Icon: enlarge
FDP party conference in April 2019 with Michael Theurer, Volker Wissing, Nicola Beer, Linda Teuteberg, Katja Suding and Christian Lindner
Photo: HAYOUNG JEON / EPA-EFE / REX
Unlike the Greens, for example, the FDP has not yet been able to achieve a quota for filling lists and management bodies.
It's not the men's fault alone.
Lindner had even been open to a quota.
But many women among the Liberals do not want to be "quota women".
In a working group before the 2019 party congress, possible ways out of the misery had been discussed for over a year, including a quota.
It was then rejected after all; internally, there was even fear of a "wave of resignations" by female members if it were introduced.
Even the otherwise often rebellious offspring has so far strictly rejected a quota.
Quotas do not do justice to the female members, "reduce them to their gender," said Ria Schröder recently, who until recently was the chairwoman of the Young Liberals.
Instead, the federal party congress decided in April 2019 "target agreements" for a stronger representation, which the outgoing Secretary General Teuteberg had recently taken care of in talks with the regional associations.
A task that is now also waiting for Wissing.
After all, there are new female faces that are to play an increasingly important role at state and federal level in the future.
In Rhineland-Palatinate, where the FDP and Wissing have been ruling at a traffic light with the SPD and the Greens since 2016, its State Secretary Daniela Schmitt will be the top candidate for the Liberals in the state election next year.
Otherwise there is movement.
At the upcoming FDP federal party congress in mid-September, the designated Hessian FDP state chairwoman Bettina Stark-Watzinger is running for an observer position in the presidium, while the other is the Saxon-Anhalt FDP top candidate Lydia Hüsken.
If both were elected, Wolfgang Kubicki has already calculated, there would be a "44 percent quota for women" in the FDP Presidium in future.
Icon: The mirror