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FDP board member Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann
Photo: Britta Pedersen / picture alliance / dpa
During the election campaign, the SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz had promised to fill his cabinet equally. Leading representatives of the FDP cannot, however, get enthusiastic about this idea in a traffic light coalition. “If you want to reflect social reality in the cabinet, it of course makes sense to have ministers in the cabinet alike. But first and foremost, professional competence must play a role, because belonging to a gender, ”said FDP board member Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann to the newspapers of the Funke media group (Monday editions).
Vice-party chairman Wolfgang Kubicki described "rigid quota regulations" as "counterproductive because they reduce people to external characteristics."
When appointing cabinet posts, "qualifications and the ability to lead a ministry should always play a major role," he said.
It is therefore "also possible that there are more women than men in the cabinet."
The idea of a quoted cabinet is not new.
Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) also had half of her cabinet occupied by ministers.
And that, although women represent a minority in their parliamentary group, similar to the FDP.
Even after the federal election, the proportion of women in the Union parliamentary group has hardly increased.
Overall, however, the proportion of women in parliament will increase slightly in future.
This is mainly due to the fact that the Greens and the SPD will be more represented.
In the future, women parliamentarians will make up 58 percent of the Greens, while the SPD will have 42 percent.
However, only a few women from the FDP are moving into parliament: just 24 percent of liberal parliamentarians will be women - as many as in the last election.
While the SPD and the Greens have set up internal party quotas, the FDP has been fighting against such an instrument for years.
mfh / AFP