Outside View: From Kohl's "Girl" to Head of Europe - Was Angela Merkel Important to Women?

Created: 02/18/2022, 09:13

From: Foreign Policy

Angela Merkel meets schoolgirls in an Algerian high school for girls (archive photo).

© Michael Kappeler/dpa

Angela Merkel's long political era is over.

The once most powerful woman in the world leaves a double-edged feminist legacy.

• Angela Merkel was Germany's Federal Chancellor* for 16 years.

• Merkel was the first female head of government in Germany - but was her work helpful for the women in the country?

• In this article, journalist Jill Petzinger takes a look at Merkel's "feminist" legacy.

• This text is available in German for the first time – it was first published by

  Foreign Policy

  magazine on December 13, 2021 .

Washington, DC - Angela Merkel has been associated with many attributes during her 16-year tenure at the helm of Europe's largest economy.

Some praised her as hardworking, decent and trustworthy.

Foreign media liked to refer to her as the "leader of the free world".

Others saw in her a shrewd power man who carefully observed how the political wind was blowing before making decisions.

Whatever label this often inscrutable woman was put on, one thing she has always avoided herself: feminist.

Angela Merkel: feminism change of mind at the very end of her term?

In 2017, at an onstage event, Merkel awkwardly declined to call herself a feminist.

In an interview with the German newspaper 

 , she later explained that for her, feminists were women like the famous German activist Alice Schwarzer or those who fought for the right to vote.

"I don't want to adorn myself with false laurels," said Merkel.

"As much as you've fought for women's rights all your life, I can't say that about myself."

But in September 2021, when the end of her term in office was in sight, Merkel appeared to be making a change of heart.

She said she believes that "men and women [...] are equal," and told an enthusiastic audience, "And in that sense, today I can affirmatively say that I am a feminist."

The chancellor and subtle sexism - Merkel never wanted to be a feminist heroine

Born Angela Dorothea Kasner in 1954, Merkel grew up in communist East Germany, where her father was a Protestant pastor.

She learned to find her way in a man's world early on, first as a scientist, then in the male-dominated German political scene and in her own conservative Christian Democratic Party (CDU*).

Her old boss, the late former Chancellor Helmut Kohl*, called her "my girl".

On the international stage, she has withstood attempts by former US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to insult and undermine her.

This kind of subtle sexism may explain why Merkel has resisted the role of the feminist heroine.

"I rarely turn only to women," Merkel told Die

.

"I'm not just the chancellor of women in Germany, but the chancellor of all people in Germany... Parity in all areas just seems logical to me.

I don't have to keep mentioning that."

While Merkel's invariable uniform of boxy jackets and black pants serves to keep media focus on what she does rather than what she wears, her fashion choices have also been interpreted as her way of de-feminizing herself to survive in patriarchy.

Merkel's outfit and its deeper meaning: "It was like armor"

Anke Domscheit-Berg, member of the Bundestag from the opposition party Die Linke, considers the chancellor's aesthetic decisions to be a kind of smoke screen.

"It was like armor," she says.

"A kind of protection from being considered a woman... She has always stayed aloof from almost all divisive issues — and gender rights issues are always divisive."

In her first years as Chancellor, Merkel campaigned for women-friendly laws and initiatives such as paid parental leave, the expansion of public kindergartens and the legal right to a kindergarten place for children from the age of one.

In the second half of her tenure, however, she has pushed few new initiatives on childcare or other initiatives to improve the status of women.

In 2015, Merkel backed legislation mandating a “women's quota” on supervisory boards, but only reluctantly and after long opposition.

In some cases, it appears to have been slow to advance gender equality efforts.

Although the number of women on company boards has remained low, she and her party opposed a proposed law requiring at least one woman to sit on boards of large publicly traded companies with three or more directors.

After pressure from the coalition partner, the CDU finally agreed, and the law was passed in 2021.

Most recently, there was only one female CEO in a company listed in the DAX 40 in Germany.

Merkel and the women: support for von der Leyen and Kramp-Karrenbauer - and dubious results

In her own party, Merkel has tried to push women into high-level positions, in some cases with unfortunate results.

She transferred Ursula von der Leyen from the Family Ministry to the Defense Ministry.

After von der Leyen's ministry became embroiled in a contract scandal, Merkel pushed for her to become President of the European Commission.

Her other protégé, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, succeeded Merkel as CDU leader and defense minister.

After a series of faux pas, she resigned in February 2020.

In 2017, Merkel's governing coalition passed the Pay Transparency Act, which allows employees to find out what colleagues in similar positions are earning.

However, the law only applies to employers with at least 200 employees and imposes an obligation on employees to collect information about wages.

German women suffer from one of the largest pay gaps in Europe.

European Commission data from 2019 shows a gender pay gap of 14.1 percent across the European Union, while the gross hourly gender gap in Germany is 19.2 percent.

Is there a Merkel legacy for women in the country?

Left draws a bitter partial conclusion

While Merkel's record of increasing the proportion of women in leadership positions has been mixed, her efforts in the key area of ​​women's empowerment - reproductive rights - are certainly not.

"Thirty-two years after the wall came down, I still don't have the same [reproductive] rights as I had in East Germany," said Domscheit-Berg, who comes from the same area in East Germany as Merkel.

"I think that's terrible."

In the former East, abortion was a legal right up to the 12th week of pregnancy.

Women also had access to free birth control.

Although abortion is now permitted in Germany up to the 12th week, women must first seek advice and wait three days before they are given the go-ahead for the procedure.

Birth control is only free for women up to the age of 22.

Another German law in the Merkel era criminalized doctors who publicly “advertised” abortion, not only listing it as a service, but also providing information online about methods, costs, or post-procedure recovery.

Doctors who break the law face fines or imprisonment.

Merkel, who has not publicly spoken out for or against abortion, has not openly advocated changing abortion laws during her tenure.

Only now that she and the CDU are no longer in government is the new coalition in Berlin to abolish the law against advertising abortion.

Merkel's symbolic legacy is great

This reluctance to speak out publicly on divisive issues is characteristic of the outgoing chancellor.

"She's very discreet," says Stefanie Lohaus, Director and Head of Communications at EAF Berlin, a non-profit organization that advocates for more diversity in leadership positions.

"From the outside, we can't tell what fights she fought."

For her part, Merkel has downplayed her importance to women, warning that "one swallow doesn't make a summer".

But despite her spotty record on women's rights, her symbolic legacy is great.

"I think compared to 30 or 40 years ago, what we have, not only in the German government but [in general], is more than one swallow," says Katharina Wrohlich, professor of public finance, gender and family economics at the University of Potsdam and head of the Gender Economics research group at the German Institute for Economic Research.

Angela Merkel "mother" or above all "de facto boss of Europe" - with meaning for young women

As the de facto boss of Europe, the woman with the nickname 

 Germany and the EU driven by political upheavals, from the eurozone debt crisis of 2008 to Brexit.

In 2015, she used her political capital by refusing to close Germany's borders to Syrian refugees - a move that brought popular support to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, but also to Merkel as a European moral authority positioned.

“Just the fact that she's been in this position and been able to stay in power for so long and has this keen sense of leadership – whether you agree with her or not, she's a leader – naturally makes her one in that sense Role model for women and girls,” says Lohaus.

By the end of 2021, many young Germans only knew one female Chancellor.

Alice Schwarzer, the feminist icon Merkel invokes to explain that she disagrees with the label,  told

 her take on the outgoing chancellor's most important legacy: "She's very much admired by girls and Women in the world.. [S]he is just a feminist statement by its very existence.”

Merkel herself put it even more clearly.

At an event marking the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage in Germany, she stated: "No one laughs at a young girl anymore when she says that she wants to become a minister or even chancellor one day."

by Jill Petzinger

Jill Petzinger

 is a freelance journalist and former Germany correspondent for 

and

.

She currently lives in Spain.

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This article was first published in English in the magazine "ForeignPolicy.com" on December 513, 2021 - as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to the readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.

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