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Women's Politics: The Feminist Union

2019-09-14T05:16:36.296Z


The women of the CDU want to get involved in their federal meeting for quoted election lists. The demand comes at the right time: There are apparently more and more women's rights activists in the Union. Can this be?



Party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is one. CDU Federal Executive Member Elisabeth Motschmann also. And even Peter Altmaier claims the name for himself, "wholeheartedly". Being a feminist or feminist seems to be the order of the day in the Union.

Maybe it's the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage this year. Or the realization that the female part of the population - more than half of the population - is quite important for a people's party. After all, the CDU needs more voters again, and women rarely choose AfD.

Feminism and the CDU, actually sounds like a contradiction. Feminism is the desire to change gender relations, the conservative party was not for a long time as a progressive force. Only a few years ago, the women and family policy was dedusted until the Rhenish-Catholic men's association CDU had gotten used to the chairman Angela Merkel, which has lasted.

When women in the Union today call themselves feminists, they always emphasize that it is about women's rights, equal rights, not political ideology that links feminism to the issue of abortion. And just feminism is a good term for Union politicians to demand: we urgently need more women here.

The Union is one of the parties with the fewest female members: in the past 20 years, the proportion of women among them has hardly grown, from 25 to 26 percent. But we have the Chancellor, better and better, it has not been criticized in recent years often.

But Merkel herself, that is part of the truth, has been rather moderate in her term of office for women's policy, the demand for the quota has never made her own. The Ministry of Family Affairs has been occupied by the SPD in recent years. Women's policy - actually, the CDU is not very noticeable here. Merkel was in the promotion of women "not a trailblazer," the CDU MP Motschmann admitted recently in SPIEGEL.

The attention is there - only the Fauenpolitik is missing

As a result, the image of three conservative women in leadership recently led the Tageszeitung to the title, "That's not how we imagined the end of patriarchy." Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, Ursula von der Leyen and Angela Merkel had demonstrated how women can come to power strategically, quietly and through mutual support. An almost iconic picture. The attention was there. Missing only the women's policy.

Hayoung Jeon / EPA-EFE / REX

Bliss in a pack of three: Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (from left to right), Ursula von der Leyen and Angela Merkel in the appointment of the new Minister of Defense

The now wants to call the women's union offensive: At their federal meeting on the weekend in Leipzig, they want to resolve the demand for equality electoral lists. In addition, according to the will of the CDU women, a Bundestag commission should examine the possibility of a parity law for the parliament.

In Berlin, the women's spokeswoman of her group, Yvonne Magwas, is fighting for it. In a women's round with politicians from other parties, she also wants to set up a committee in the Bundestag to investigate what the legal framework for a parity law is. For months they meet and debate about the topic.

Women's policy as a means against the AfD

Especially after the state elections in Saxony and Brandenburg, in which the voting behavior of women played a role, that seems to interest the women politicians. "If only men had voted in Saxony, then the AfD would have won," says Magwas, whose constituency lies in the Saxon Vogtland. More women as a means against the AfD? At least in Saxony, according to electoral analyzes, significantly more women than men have elected the CDU - with more female politicians, perhaps even more voters could be won.

imago / Metodi Popov

CDU politician Yvonne Magwas

In Saxony, however, has shown something else. For the first time, the CDU had occupied the first ten places here in equal numbers - that has worked, finds the head of the Women's Union, Annette Widmann-Mauz: "After all, are in Saxony of the four MPs who have moved through the list of CDU, three women . "

However, out of 45 mandates, only nine are women - after all, many CDU candidates are drawn into the state parliament through direct mandates. Here also brings a quota nothing. But it would be a start, possibly with symbolic power.

Why the politicians could be successful with their demands right now? Because it has promised them the CDU boss. Kramp-Karrenbauer said that, at least after her election to the party leadership: "A debate about more women in the party, she guilty," even those who have fought for that I am standing here ". It would be "a failure," she says, if the CDU fails to send more women to the Bundestag. The women's union had supported Kramp-Karrenbauer on their way to the top.

But a problem also remains unresolved with Quote: It also needs women in the party, the offices and mandates want. Already in 1996, the women's union had won a quorum in the party: According to this, one third of the posts must be filled with women.

That worked in part at the highest level. That was not so easy in local politics. There were too few female candidates. Perhaps it would help not only to argue for more women in political posts, but also to offer them something more in terms of content. For a woman in power is not yet a women's rights activist.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2019-09-14

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