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EQUALITY

10 German women who changed the world

To mark International Women’s Day, we take a look at ten influential German women who changed the course of history.

Various portraits of publicist Hannah Arendt taken by photographer Fred Stein hang in the Sprengel Museum in Hannover.
Various portraits of publicist Hannah Arendt taken by photographer Fred Stein hang in the Sprengel Museum in Hannover. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Hauke-Christian Dittrich

Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919)

At a time when women didn’t even have the right to vote, Rosa Luxemburg was at the forefront of the revolutionary social democratic movement in Germany. The founder of the Spartacus League and the Communist Party, she tried to bring about the end of World War I with mass strikes. After the suppression of the Spartacus uprising in 1919, she was murdered by German soldiers.

Luxemburg was an influential figure in the European labor movement, Marxism, antimilitarism, and proletarian internationalism.

Hannah Höch (1889-1978)

The only female member of the influential Dadaist movement of the early 20th century, Berlin-born artist Hannah Höch was an artistic pioneer and one of the first artists to use the photomontage technique.

A visitor at the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin views “The Journalists” – an artwork from 1925 by Hannah Höch. Photo: picture-alliance/ dpa | Stephanie Pilick

With themes such as women’s self-determination over their bodies, their professions and the development of their personalities, her works provide an insight into the turbulent 20th century – from the women’s rights movement and the two world wars. Her artworks mix satire with seriousness and still feel very current even today.

Alice Salomon (1872-1948)

Alice Salomon was one of the most internationally renowned social reformers and feminists of the 20th century.

After getting involved in social work at the age of 21 in 1899 she became chairwoman of the Association of Girls’ and Women’s Groups for Social Relief Work.

In 1908 she founded the Social Women’s School in Berlin, and in 1925, Salomon was the main initiator of the “German Academy for Social and Educational Work with Women” – a unique attempt to develop a concept of specifically female science and research in the social field.

Her core concept of using sound and practical teaching with reference to international practices fundamentally influenced pedagogy and social work all over the world.

Angela Merkel (1954)

Like her or loathe her, there’s no denying that Angela Merkel’s premiership was historic.

Angela Merkel, former German chancellor, speaking as she accepts the UNHCR Nansen Refugee Award during a ceremony in October 2022. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/KEYSTONE REUTERS POOL | Stefan Wermuth

The first-ever female Chancellor of Germany served for 16 years and, for a longtime, was seen as a reliable figurehead at the centre of EU politics.

Now, her legacy has been overshadowed by her reluctance to cut ties with Russia and move away from Russian energy, but she’ll perhaps be best remembered for her open-arms policy to refugees fleeing the war in Syria in 2015, when she told the public “wir schaffen das” (We’ll manage).

Anne Frank (1929-1945)

Although Anne Frank lived in Amsterdam for most of her life, she was born in Frankfurt. Her family fled Germany in 1934.

The Diary of Anne Frank is one of the most famous historical documents of the 20th century. It was written by the teenager between 1942 and 1944 and gives a unique and highly personal insight into the life of a young person living in hiding from the Nazi regime.  

The book has been translated into more than 70 languages so far and Anne Frank remains a powerful symbol of hopeful, innocent youth in the face of terror around the world to this day. 

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, Hannah Arendt went on to become one of the great political thinkers of the 20th century.

She became publicly known through her main political work Elements and Origins of Total Rule in the early 1950s.

Hannah Arendt, political scientist and sociologist. Photo: picture-alliance/ dpa | UPI

In 1961, she acted as a reporter in the trial of holocaust mastermind Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem and in 1963 published the controversial book Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil.

Arendt remained stateless until 1951, eventually acquiring U.S. citizenship. Hannah Arendt died in the USA on December 4, 1975.

Alice Schwarzer (1942)

Alice Schwarzer is probably the best-known feminist in the German-speaking world.

She initiated, among other things, the campaign “We have had an abortion,” in 1971 in which 374 women – prominent and non-celebrity – publicly admitted in a cover story in Stern magazine that they had terminated their pregnancies illegally. 

Alice Schwarzer, women’s rights activist, speaks on stage during the demonstration in favour of negotiations with Russia in the Ukraine war in Berlin, February 2023. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | Monika Skolimowska

As a public feminist, Alice Schwarzer became a figurehead and mouthpiece of the entire women’s rights movement in Germany and her fiery television appearances are legendary. She founded the feminist magazine “Emma” in 1977, which she still heads as editor-in-chief. She has recently become a controversial figure in German politics, for pushing for negotiations with Russia to end its war in Ukraine – against Ukrainian wishes.

Bertha Benz (1849-1944)

Without Bertha Benz, the history of mobility would have been very different. On August 5th, 1888, she took the first ever long trip in a motor vehicle and in doing so, she proved to her husband and the rest of the world that his invention worked for everyday use and had the potential to change everything.

Two years earlier, Carl Benz had received a patent for his “vehicle with gas engine operation” and though the local press had reported on the invention, there was not much enthusiasm for it, as it was considered impractical.

It took the courage of Benz’s wife to take the car on a long-distance drive to prove to the world that the “Benz Patent-Motorwagen No. 3” could change the future. 

Sophie Scholl (1921-1943)

Sophie Scholl is probably one of the most courageous women in German history. Together with her brother, she founded the “White Rose” group, which rebelled against National Socialism.

The undated photo shows Sophie Scholl, member of the “White Rose”. In leaflets, the resistance group denounced the crimes of the National Socialists. Photo: picture alliance/dpa | –

She had leaflets printed against National Socialism, which were distributed throughout Germany and caused a great stir. Because of her struggle, she was sentenced to death by the Nazis at the age of only 21 and executed by guillotine.

The Scholl siblings are commemorated with dozens of streets, paths, squares and schools in Germany named after them.

Emmy Noether (1882-1945)

Transcending the boundaries of traditional thinking in mathematics, the mathematician Emmy Noether is widely considered to be one of the most important female scientists of the 20th century.

When Albert Einstein wrote an obituary for Emmy Noether in 1935, he described her as a “creative mathematical genius” who – despite “unselfish, significant work over a period of many years” – did not get the recognition she deserved.

Noether is one of the founders of modern algebra and she also did pioneering work in theoretical physics. Noether’s theorem, which she presented in 1918, was developed decades later into one of the most important foundations of physics.

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EQUALITY

Why is the gender pay gap so big in German-speaking countries?

In Germany, Switzerland and Austria, women are losing ground in the fight for pay equity, according to a recent analysis from the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research.

Why is the gender pay gap so big in German-speaking countries?

As DACH countries celebrate International Women’s Day, inequalities in the workplace still remain – especially when it comes to remuneration. 

Despite efforts to close the gender pay gap, new research reveals that men still receive much higher bonuses than women in German-speaking countries.

“The gender pay gap in bonus payments is significantly bigger than in basic salary,” said Ifo researcher Michaela Paffenholz in a report published on Tuesday. “These major differences make the gap in total salary even larger.”

Ifo’s data reveals the pay gap in performance related bonuses extends across the DACH region. In Germany, women receive an average of 6.1 percent less in bonus payments, while in Austria, the gap between men and women is 7.2 percent and in Switzerland, women receive an average of 5.2 percent less in bonuses.

The prevalence of performance-based pay continues to grow across Europe. The number of workers receiving performance bonuses nearly doubled from 2000 to 2015 to include nearly a third of European workers, according to a European Trade Union Institute working paper. 

Reducing the gender pay gap is one of the top priorities of the EU Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025. But the issue of unequal bonus pay has received little focus from policymakers. 

Ifo Institute’s analysis found that bonus payments can increase the gender wage gap. 

In Germany, the pay gap between men and women in basic salary is 2.7 percent, but bonuses increase this gap to 3 percent in total salary. In Austria, the gender gap in basic salary is 2.3 percent, with bonus pay bumping that up to 2.9 percent.

In Switzerland, the gap is 1.2 percent for basic salary; bonus payments increase this to 1.6 percent for total salary.

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Still, the gender pay gap is not limited to hourly earnings and bonus payments: working in lower-paid sectors and fewer working hours also contribute to the gap between men and women’s pay.

According to statistics from the Germany’s Statistical Office, working women in Germany earned 18 percent less than men in 2023. 

This story translates across the DACH region. In Austria women earned 18.4 percent less gross wages per hour than men in 2022. Swiss women face a similar reality. Working women earned 18 percent less than men in 2022, despite “equal pay for work of equal value” being enshrined in the federal constitution since 1981. 

Larger companies are overrepresented in the market data collected by Mercer, so the studies are not representative of all companies in the DACH region. 

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