"Union has a problem with strong women": SPD teases, women's union urges - does Merz flourish the quota debate?

Created: 03/29/2022, 12:13 p.m

By: Marc Dimitriu

Friedrich Merz blooms a new debate about the women's quota.

© Michael Kappeler/dpa

The CDU is losing more and more women in important positions.

The Women's Union is now calling for a quota again.

But party leader Merz is not very impressed.

Berlin – At least superficially, the gender distribution in the past few years at the CDU* looked good.

One remembers the picture from 2019 when Chancellor Angela Merkel* accompanied Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Ursula von der Leyen* to the appointment and dismissal as Minister of Defense.

German chancellor, party leader/defense minister and commission president: three strong women from the CDU, who lead the fate of the country and the EU.

But even then, apart from the absolute top positions, it looked rather meager with women in responsibility at the Union.

And of the former triumvirate, only von der Leyen is still in office.

Now there is dissatisfaction in the CDU - and ridicule among political opponents.

Ursula von der Leyen (CDU, M), outgoing Defense Minister and newly elected EU Commission President, is sitting in Bellevue Palace next to her successor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (l) and Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU).

© Michael Kappeler/dpa

Women's Union is pushing for tighter quotas in the party statues

And the bloodletting continues.

At the weekend, the last female CDU state chairwoman, the former Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner, handed over her office in Rhineland-Palatinate to Christian Baldauf, leader of the state parliament.

Under the leadership of the new CDU federal chairman Friedrich Merz*, the diversity in the important offices is not going particularly well.

Now he is threatened with another quota debate.

In view of the continued decline in the proportion of women in CDU leadership positions, the Women's Union is pushing for stricter quota regulations in the party statutes.

"Only one parliamentary group leader and general secretary of the CDU at state level clearly show the structural problem of the CDU in the representation of women," said the chairwoman of the women's union, Annette Widmann-Mauz, the newspapers of the

.

"In the political competition, we remain below our standards and possibilities," she said.

"In order to exploit our potential, we need a culture of listening and appreciating as well as the structural safeguarding of equal participation in the statutes."

Merz threatens new quota debate - Klingbeil teases: "The Union has a problem with strong women"

A compromise for a stricter quota system has been available for over a year.

The amendment to the statutes still has to be confirmed by a presence party conference.

Because of the corona pandemic, the last two party conferences took place as online formats.

Merz has so far been skeptical about a formal quota system.

The new government approaches the distribution of posts with a different aspiration.

Eight women hold ministerial posts under Chancellor Olaf Scholz, which means that almost half of the cabinet (eight of 17 members) is female.

With the SPD* and the Greens, two coalition partners are also led by a dual leadership in which both sexes are represented.

Only the FDP still has some catching up to do in this respect.

The traffic light * even wants to have recognized that the Union under Merz not only has a problem with women internally, but also increasingly criticizes the female traffic light ministers.

SPD leader Saksika Esken accuses her CDU colleague in an interview with

: "There is a simple reason why there is disproportionate criticism of Interior Minister Nancy Faeser and Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht: the Union has agreed to zero in on the women and to criticize them publicly – as often as possible.” Her co-chairman Lars Klingbeil adds in the same interview: “Both ministers are doing a very good job.

But the Union has a problem with strong women, and they are demonstrating that very clearly." (

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