At a recent conference of Germany's Christian Democrat (CDU) youth wing, Chancellor Angela Merkel looked out across the group's leadership and had a laconic observation to share: "Very male," she said.
"But 50 percent of the population is missing," she continued, addressing the group of which just 5 of 16 state-level boards are led by women. "Women enrich life, not only private life but also political life. You don't know what you're missing."
To the rest of the world, Germany may seem like a beacon for women's political representation: For the last 13 years, the country has been led by Merkel, the world's most powerful female politician. And it's not just her: the leader of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), Andrea Nahles, is also a woman; in the race to replace Merkel as head of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU), one top candidate is her close ally and the party's secretary-general, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.
A century of small steps
As Germany celebrates the 100th anniversary of women's suffrage on November 12th, however, it's clear that the presence of women at the top levels of politics has not necessarily translated into similar success for other female leaders.
Though the country's early efforts to promote gender equality made it one of the world's most pioneering when it came to promoting women's political participation, Germany has today fallen behind in this effort. Compared with other countries, Germany's share of women in politics is only middling, and the percentage of women in the German Bundestag has reached a 20-year low.
That lack of strong women's representation in German politics a is indicative of the broader problems of gender equality in the country, too. In other industries and across public life, German women are hindered in reaching high-profile leadership positions.
The numbers
In Germany's lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, the percentage of women actually dropped after the 2017 federal elections: Just 218 of the 709 elected parliamentarians, or 31 percent, are women. This puts Germany in 46th place in the world ranking of female representation (out of 193 countries), trailing 11 other European Union member states, according to statistics from the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The previous German Bundestag, by contrast, included nearly 37 percent female parliamentarians.
Rwanda leads the global ranking with 61.3 percent women in its lower house of parliament. Back in Europe, Sweden, for example, has a parliament comprised of 46 percent women; Finland, Norway, and France all have around or just over 40 percent women.
The drop that occurred in the 2017 elections comes in large part from the two political parties that entered or reentered the Bundestag this time around: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which gained parliamentary seats for the first time, and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), which returned after four years out of parliament. Of the AfD's 92 members, just 11 percent are women; among the FDP's parliamentary group, 24 percent are women.
