TITLE:
Women’s Underrepresentation in German Politics—Reforms and Reform Needs Based on the Local Level
AUTHORS:
Lars Holtkamp, Rosalyn Dressman
KEYWORDS:
Women Representation, Quotas, Term Limits, Mayors, City Council, Open List Election
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.12 No.2,
April
29,
2022
ABSTRACT: In Germany, the representation of women at all
federal levels in parliament has been stagnating for decades. This is mainly
due to the personalized proportional representation system and the inconsistent
voluntary party quotas, some of which are not very binding. The objective of
this research is to subject the German Politics to critical analysis from the
perspective of women’s representation and
participation at all levels of Government. The paper relied on secondary source
of information viz. Journal articles etc. After Angela Merkel’s
resignation, it became even clearer that the underrepresentation of women at
the top of the government was even greater than in the parliaments. At
municipal level, the proportion of women in mayoral offices in Germany
stagnates at 10%. This is mainly because, firstly, the larger parties hardly
have any women and, depending on the path, the mostly male incumbents are
usually re-elected. If the major parties nominate female mayoral candidates,
they are also in a difficult starting position. They either must compete against
incumbents or in the diaspora of the parties, which significantly reduces the
chances of an election victory. With institutional solutions such as term
limits in mayoral elections and cumulation and splitting (open
list election) combined with legal quotas for female candidates in
parliamentary elections at all federal levels, the descriptive representation
of women in German politics could be significantly increased.