After an emotional debate
CDU decides on quota for women
9/9/2022, 8:58 p.m
The debate is emotional, the resistance fierce. But in the end, the delegates approve the board’s request: the CDU has a quota for women.
The majority of the party conference of the CDU spoke out in favor of a quota for women. An absolute majority of 559 votes cast brought about the decision in Hanover. Earlier, in a debate dominated by women’s contributions, delegates had an emotional battle over whether a quota was necessary to empower women and increase the number of female members. For decades, the proportion of female members in the CDU has not exceeded a quarter.
In the debate, in which 34 speakers took part, the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Hendrik Wüst, spoke out in favor of the quota. Using his own mother as an example, he explained that qualifications are not the only important thing for women, but also opportunities to develop. Former party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer also advocated a quota for women. She owes the start of her career in the CDU to a quorum.
Several CDU politicians, mainly young women, who already hold offices in the party, advocated rejecting the women’s quota. Better compatibility with work and family is more important in order to get more women enthusiastic about the CDU. Wiebke Winter, member of the CDU national board, explained in her speech that she did not want to be a quota woman.
In an impassioned speech, former Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner questioned the direction of the debate. Like Kramp-Karrenbauer before her, she pointed out that a quota paved her way into politics. The biggest hooting is then “when women are positioned against women. Our voters are positioned differently, either we like it or we don’t fit them anymore”.
“Do we trust ourselves so little?”
The party chairman Friedrich Merz initially refrained from making a speech for the quota, but then finally spoke up. In no state parliament does the proportion of women reflect that in the population. “Don’t we dare to make such a small leap forward today?” asked Merz. The CDU must do much more “than what we want to decide here today”.
The idea of a women’s quota has been highly controversial within the party for several years, and the Junge Union, the party’s youth organization, vehemently rejects it. In order not to let the debate get out of hand, the party congress had closed the list of speakers for 34 requests to speak and limited the speaking time to two minutes.