Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel with other world leaders at the 2018 G7 summit in Charlevoix, Canada.JESCO DENZE / EFE
The young promises of the German center-right were waiting with excitement for Angela Merkel's speech, the highlight of their 2018 annual congress in Kiel.
They had just reelected their youth president with a spectacular result and it was the turn of the great consolidated politics.
They expected to hear his advice, his encouragement, his blessing.
On stage and flanked by the heavyweights of the youth, Merkel told them about NATO, cohesion in the party, climate change and Europe.
It was at the end that he threw the puja.
“If you allow me a little criticism.
Its executive is wonderfully masculine, but 50% of the people are missing ”.
And he added: “I tell you one thing: women enrich life.
Not only in private, but also in politics.
Do not be afraid.
They don't even know what they are missing ”.
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The Merkel method
That public reprimand was no exception. Months later, Merkel traveled to Israel. One of the photos that emerged from the visit was again devastating. In the center, Merkel in a fuchsia jacket. Along with her, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and 25 innovative businessmen, neckties and dressed in shades of gray and black. All men. The line-up did not escape the chancellor, who told them: "I am very happy with this meeting, but it would be nice to include a woman next time." His remarks filled the headlines of the Israeli press, which spoke of national shame and opened the ban for a protest by Israeli businesswomen from the high-tech sector.
And yet another, at the Arts and Crafts Association, in the fall of 2020. When Question Time had ended and after only men had addressed the Chancellor from the public, Merkel took justice into her own hands: “Do they also have a woman?
If a woman wants to ask something, I accept a fourth question ”.
When I activated the radar to detect such reprimands, I realized that they had become constant.
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Merkel avoids declaring herself a feminist, partly as she denies any other label beyond her party's initials, but she openly defends parity as an unquestionable goal. Like so many other women who have climbed to the top, Merkel may have started her career thinking that she is living proof that if a woman is talented and works hard, she will be treated the same as a man. In fact, she explained years ago that when she was appointed Minister of Women and Youth, she was against quotas. "I am against quotas, because I believe that women do not need them, that they are degrading and dishonorable," she said in the 1990s. Over the years, however, he has been able to see that talent and effort are often not enough. That in 20 years, in Germany there has been progress on the paved road to equality,but they have been slow and insufficient. She has come to realize that valuable women have been left behind, trapped in labor and social structures that boycotted her progression. That it is a structural problem, of entrenched power that has little to do with meritocracy. He has been able to verify that change, real equality, will only come if there is a decided political and legal impulse. That alone will not come. (…)That alone will not come. (…)That alone will not come. (…)
Merkel has been the first in almost every position she has held, including the first woman chancellor in German history. It is something that, in addition, many men have not tired of reminding him. Starting with her supposed affectionate nickname: Mädchen,
Kohl's girl
, as some journalists referred to her for years. You don't have to be a lynx to understand that no matter how much love there was behind, that nickname dwarfed her. It was made clear to her from the start that she was not destined for heights. When she stopped being the girl she began to be Mutti, the
mother
of the nation.
Kohl's girl and caring mother ended up being the most powerful woman on the planet. Getting there has not been easy. She has been the first and so far the only chancellor in a country that claims to be egalitarian, but where politics is still dominated by men. Merkel has been able to experience in her own skin the masculinized power dynamics, the complicity that operates between the barons of the parties, very evident in the CDU. She has seen how she or her companions have been subjected to the underestimation and neglect of their fellow men. Merkel has had to circumvent that tacit agreement woven around male complicities, which in the case of her political background even has its own name: the Andean Pact. It is about the informal alliance sealed by a dozen men from the CDU and watered with Chivas Regal,They secretly swore mutual support and eternal loyalty to each other in the late 1970s. It happened during a trip for young conservative politicians to Latin America, according to the German press. These are men who entered the CDU out of an aversion to the spirit of May '68. Over the years, the group informally recruited new members. Former European Commissioner Günther Oettinger or one of the candidates for his succession, Friedrich Merz, would have also been members of the select club. They wanted to share the power behind thethe group was informally incorporating new members. Former European Commissioner Günther Oettinger or one of the candidates for his succession, Friedrich Merz, would have also been members of the select club. They wanted to share the power behind thethe group was informally incorporating new members. Former European Commissioner Günther Oettinger or one of the candidates for his succession, Friedrich Merz, would have also been members of the select club. They wanted to share the power behind the
it was kohl
, because they consider themselves the true guardians of their heritage and the essences of the party. They were the CDU, and Merkel, an upstart. Some of them have not been able to overcome decades after a timid scientist from the East ended up derailing their plans. They are credited with the fact that Merkel was not a candidate for chancellor in 2002, when they favored the Bavarian Stoiber, who shortly after crashed at the polls. Annette Schavan, a friend of Merkel, described to me how this alliance operated within the party. “In 2000, when Merkel was elected president of the CDU, it was a men's party, with few women, very western. The so-called Andean Group, which included Merz, Oettinger, Koch ..., was a relevant group because they had an idea of what the future of the party should be like.They flew over the Andes and sealed a political non-aggression pact. Faithfulness was promised. They had a plan for themselves, for the CDU and for Germany. They did not know who would be chancellor, but it was clear that the plans did not include any women. Merkel was unthinkable for these men. She was too unconventional, very different from her women. "
That masculine dominance returned to be meridian in the race for the succession of Merkel. As her party's aspiring candidates poked their heads in, it became clear that Merkel's leadership had not been a before and after, but perhaps a parenthesis. All the official candidates and the unofficial one were men. All from the west and most Catholics, lawyers and parents. The rarity that Merkel - a woman, from the East, divorced and childless - has represented in German political history was once again evident. But it may also, many analysts believe, that politics in Germany have changed forever and that there is no going back. That 16 years of leadership radically opposed to ego-drunk male figures could have vaccinated the country. Of what there is no doubt is that,Due to her personality and the mere fact of being a woman, Merkel has been a magnet for the female vote. In Germany I came across a lot of women who explained to me that it had never occurred to them to vote for the Conservative party, but that they had voted for Merkel. They were convinced by the idea of supporting the figure of a woman with whom they empathized for having had to make their way into a very masculine world. It will be interesting to see where that vote goes the day Merkel is gone.They were convinced by the idea of supporting the figure of a woman with whom they empathized for having had to make their way into a very masculine world. It will be interesting to see where that vote goes the day Merkel is gone.They were convinced by the idea of supporting the figure of a woman with whom they empathized for having had to make their way into a very masculine world. It will be interesting to see where that vote goes the day Merkel is gone.
Ana Carbajosa was a correspondent for EL PAÍS in Germany, coinciding with the last term of Angela Merkel.
This is an excerpt from 'Angela Merkel.
Chronicle of an era '(Peninsula), which is published this September 1.
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