The CDU and the Politics of Gender in Germany

Abstract

This book develops the concept of the corporatist catch-all party to explain how the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has responded to changing demands from women over the past forty years. Otto Kirchheimer's classic study argues that when catch-all parties reach out to new constituencies, they are forced to decrease the involvement of membership to facilitate doctrinal flexibility. In a corporatist catch-all party, however, societal interests are represented within the party organization and policy making is the result of internal party negotiation. Through an investigation of CDU policy making in the issue areas of abortion policy, work-family policy, and participation policy, this book demonstrates that sometimes the CDU mobilizes rather than disempowers membership. An important lesson of this study is that a political party need not sacrifice internal democracy and ignore its members in order to succeed at the polls.

Advancing Women in Political Science: Navigating Gendered Structures of Opportunity

“…On the one hand, women's organizations facilitate women's gains by fostering repeated interactions, supportive networks, and a sense of group consciousness among women. Further, women's organizations provide a launching pad to collectively articulate women's demands for greater representation and to infl uence party leaders to address gender inequality (Kittilson 2006 ;Leyenaar 2004 ;Lovenduski and Norris 1993 ;Wiliarty 2010 ). Walsh's ( 2011 ) research shows that women's organizations benefit from links with other organizations.…”

Gender as a Modernising Force in the German CDU

“…I have argued elsewhere, in the 1990s, the CDU lost touch with changing demands from women and this disconnect registered with female voters who once again turned away from the party. 10 Since 2002, however, the CDU has been gaining ground with women. In the 2009 election, the CDU was once again more popular with female voters than with male voters.…”

“…11 The CDU responded to the decline in women's votes in a variety of ways. 12 First, the party's internal organisation for women, the Women's Union (Frauenunion), became more powerful within the party. Under newly energetic leadership, the Women's Union was able to convince the main CDU that the party needed to respond to issues raised by the women's movement, but that it did not need to adopt all of the positions advocated by the women's movement.…”

“…These measures included a target percentage of having the percentage of women in leadership equal the percentage of women in membership and a reporting requirement that the General Secretary inform the party at large of how many women were at various levels of the party. 20 After it became clear that the number of Christian Democratic women in the Bundestag would decrease after the 1994 election, the Women's Union, re-ignited its efforts to convince the party to adopt a quota. Their efforts to get the CDU to implement a quota failed, but they were able to push through a compromise measure, the CDU's quorum.…”

Feminizing political parties

“…What literature that does exist posits two competing scenarios for party women's organizations in the contemporary era. The first, derived from the gender and politics literature, and largely based on a small number of single case studies, contends that contemporary party member women's organizations remain organizations of women, but that they are now also acting for women, even as they might still fulfill their traditional function (Childs and Webb 2012;Williarty 2010;Allen and Childs 2014). In these accounts party women's organizations are found to constitute an important site from which women are making gendered political demands of their party.…”