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POLITICS

How Merkel’s CDU plans for half of key party posts to be filled by women

Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) is planning for equal representation of women within the party, according to sources. Here's how and why.

Published: 8 July 2020 09:13 CEST
Updated: 8 July 2020 11:18 CEST
How Merkel's CDU plans for half of key party posts to be filled by women
Members of the CDU leadership including party chair Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (third left) and Chanceller Angela Merkel next to her in November 2019. Photo: DPA

After lengthy negotiations, a commission in the centre-right CDU has proposed that an equal number of women and men fill posts in the group's leadership by 2025.

The plan on the proportion of women in party offices and seats provides for a gradual increase in the quota for governing bodies starting at the regional level. On January 1st, 2021, a quota of 30 percent for women is to apply, and in January 2023 a quota of 40 percent is to be met. At the beginning of 2025, the quota for women will be 50 percent.

The compromise came after 11 hours of tough negotiations by the CDU's Structural and Statue Commission, said DPA on Wednesday.

It's not set in stone yet: the plans on the binding quota have to be approved at the CDU's federal party conference in Stuttgart, scheduled for early December.

READ ALSO: 'How much do you earn?' New law tackles gender pay gap

Why is the party proposing this?

Although the top two jobs are held by women (the party's current leader is Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Merkel is Germany's first female Chancellor), women make up only a quarter of CDU members. This is something the party leadership wants to change and hopes introducing a quota will help.

Other parties in Germany, such as the Left Party, the SPD and Greens, which is led by a woman and man team of Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, already hold similar policies.

The CDU plans will include similar rules in composing its lists for elections to the state, national and European parliaments.

READ ALSO: More men named 'Hans' than women in top government jobs

A system will also be put in place so that local party groups can report on their progress in increasing their share of women members.

What does it mean?

If passed, the regulation will apply to group elections of board members, such as deputy chairpersons and committee members, but not to individual elections of chairpersons, member representatives or treasurers at federal level.

It would only be possible to deviate from the women's quota if not enough women apply.

The commission also proposes to introduce a “political parental leave” (politische Elternzeit).

Having children should not be a problem to political commitment, the commission said. At all levels, from the local association to the federal executive board, the proposal would allow for parents to suspend posts for up to a year and then resume the post.

According to the proposal, parents should only be able to be voted out of office by a two-thirds majority during this period.

Chancellor Angela Merkel. Photo: DPA

However, the plans are subject to approval at the CDU party conference. And there are already signs of resistance within the party against the idea which was put forward by CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

The CDU Economic Council questioned if a quota was needed given the strong representation of women at the top of the party.

“I wonder whether the CDU needs this debate on women's issues at all in view of a German Chancellor, an EU Commission President and currently still a party leader, as well as three out of five heads of its federal ministries in female hands,” the President of the CDU-affiliated association, Astrid Hamker, told newspaper the Passauer Neue Presse.

“To me, approaches such as that of Ms Merkel for the economy or that of Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer for the CDU seem rather over-motivated and unrealistic.”

Debate on status of CDU's lesbian and gay group

Part of Kramp-Karrenbauer's initiative is also a revaluation of the status of the Lesbian and Gay people in the Union (LSU) group. If the party leader gets her way, the LSU is to be put on an equal footing with the student union RCDS, which can introduce its own motions at party conventions.

However, the discussion about a clear status for the LSU was postponed to Wednesday morning after the debate during the night, DPA said.

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POLITICS

Why are some Germans turning towards the far-right?

With the AfD taking second place in several polls, Lecturer in German Studies Alexander Clarkson told The Local why the pandemic and a feeling of constant crisis has normalised the far-right in Germany.

Published: 29 September 2023 13:00 CEST
Why are some Germans turning towards the far-right?

The far–right Alternative for Germany (AfD) have established themselves as second place in the national polls, with significant polling leads across most of east Germany and a number of victories in mayoral and district council races that have shocked many in mainstream German society.

Last week a study, called the FES Mitte, showed that the number of right-wing extremists in Germany had practically tripled in a few years, while also showing rises in homophobia, xenophobia and belief in conspiracy theories.

READ ALSO: Number of right-wing extremists in Germany ‘triples’

But what’s behind this?

The study’s co-author Beate Küpper blamed the rise in these attitudes on the rise of an increasingly confident and aggressive populism, which blames “the system” and “migration” for society’s problems, as well as the “multiple crises” that Germany has experienced in recent years, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis and the energy crisis caused by the country’s reliance on Russian gas, imports of which were stopped after Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Alexander Clarkson, lecturer in German studies at King’s College London and a specialist in migration, thinks that the pandemic could have been more influential than people realise in the AfD’s radicalisation, while warning that there might never be a “return to normal” on some of the issues that motivate AfD voters.

An AfD supporter holds a "campaign finale" leaflet that shows the portraits of the top Hessian AfD candidates for the state election.

An AfD supporter holds a “campaign finale” leaflet that shows the portraits of the top Hessian AfD candidates for the state election. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Andreas Arnold

Due to the shared centre ground between most parties on issues such as climate change or supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion, the AfD can portray themselves as the only actual alternative for Germany on a whole range of issues, such as protesting the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, migration or climate-friendly measures that might be costly for citizens in the short term.

“With regard to migration, the AfD can say ‘we’re the only representative of this voice’ as there are political dynamics where governments talk tough on migration but need to take them in for economic reasons,” said Clarkson.

“We need to look at specifics of the last few years – the pandemic, the war and the sudden surge in climate protection legislation like the Heizungsgesetzt,” Clarkson continued, talking of the controversial heating law that saw raucous protests in Bavaria would have started to phase out gas and oil boilers by next year but was watered down.

But the academic thinks that the pandemic played a large and so-far understudied role in how far–right ideas have spread across Germany.

“The Covid pandemic plays a central role,” he said. “Life was really bizarre and screwed up. You have far–right movements telling you that this democratic state is just a facade … and then the government tells people to stay in the homes, you have a [largely justified] highly coercive policy by a democratic state. But then the far around can turn around and say ‘I told you so – they did lock you in your homes.’

“People underestimated how much distrust of the state flowed out of the pandemic. Then the AfD can work with that when huge changes [like large-scale migration and climate protection legislation] are demanded quickly. The pandemic allowed the AfD to survive the 2021 election, but it radicalised the AfD’s base, so as additional crises come in, it opens up a much wider range of the electorate to these ideas.”

READ ALSO: Why are the far-right AfD doing so well in German polls?

And then instead of returning to normal, straight after the pandemic Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine became the next crisis, which is stressful for citizens. “We didn’t return to normality, we returned to crisis. Normal keeps not happening,” said Clarkson, warning that we may have to get used to living in multiple crises.

Amid a controversial cover of the news magazine Der Spiegel, which has been compared to both a 1920s antisemitic advert and a poster by Nigel Farage during the Brexit campaign, the topic of migration is once again causing huge political debate in Germany, as rising numbers of migrants and asylum seekers come to the country, alongside over a million Ukrainian refugees who will stay in Germany, particularly in places where there has been very little diversity previously.

But despite fluctuations in polls, Clarkson warns that we shouldn’t take the idea Germany is getting significantly more right wing at face value.

“The [conservative Christian Democrats] CDU going to the centre and abandoning claims to pre-1937 beyond the Oder-Niesse line, or say LGBT rights or shifts on issues of migration, all of this stuff is transforming what it means to be centre-right,” he said. 

Clarkson said one problem centres on what is viewed as far-right in Germany and that this can change. 

“Racist views that are now rightly classified as far–right were pretty normal in the 1980s in the CDU, and even the [social democratic] SPD,” he said.

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