Women in german politics

BERLIN — Within minutes of being sworn in as governor of the southwest German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Malu Dreyer turned to members of the opposition and gestured to lawmakers seated across the aisle from her center-left party, offering not a challenge, but an invitation.

“I pledge to you open and constructive cooperation,” Ms. Dreyer said. “That this applies to all members of Parliament.” In this, her inaugural address, she added: “Let us speak more with, and less about, one another. The origin of an idea is not important, but its value and use for our state.”

In Germany, where much is taken earnestly and politicians can be dour, Ms. Dreyer, 52, has made headlines for her wide smile. Her party, the Social Democrats, touted her sunny approach in a campaign that sold her as someone as “beloved as free beer and days off in summer.”

Her character and reputation defy what she has said is a condition that steeled her for the rough-and-tumble of politics: Ms. Dreyer suffers from multiple sclerosis, and frequently uses a wheelchair to get around.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, her political agenda is heavily focused on issues of social justice. Notably, within weeks of taking office Jan. 16, she pushed an initiative to enact a nationwide minimum wage, something resisted for years by the German political and business establishments.

Ms. Dreyer made that move through the Bundesrat, the upper house of Parliament, and consists of representatives from the 16 states. It is in those states that German female politicians, long in the shadow of men, and of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has headed the Christian Democratic Union since 2000, are now making their mark. Ms. Dreyer declined to be interviewed for this article, citing the need to focus on her work in the weeks after taking office.

While Ms. Merkel has won spurs as one of the world’s most influential women since taking office in 2005, a new generation of women wields influence closer to home. One quarter of all the states are now governed by women.

Unlike the first women to enter the top levels of politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, female governors today have spent years building up credentials in less visible positions and developed their own leadership style in the meantime.

Ms. Dreyer is a prime example. She describes her style as “inclusive, very team oriented, but also decisive.” She likes to listen to arguments, weigh possibilities and then make a decision.

During the 11 years she spent as labor minister in her state, Ms. Dreyer — a trained lawyer who served as a state prosecutor in Bad Kreuznach before entering politics, as the mayor of that same city — became known for tackling problems at the source. She held roundtable meetings to discuss the issue of caring for the elderly in nursing homes so that workers could participate. Her own experiences as the mother of a patchwork family with three children and resident of a publicly sponsored social living project have contributed to her image of being straightforward and someone to whom average people can relate.

Bettina Munimus, a researcher with the European Academy for Women in Politics and Economics, based in Berlin, said that Ms. Dreyer’s more consensus-oriented approach is indicative of an overall shift, visible in the other states where women are now in charge — including the biggest, North Rhine-Westphalia, as well as Saarland and Thuringia.

“In the previous generation, the old male politicians used the ‘basta’ style of politics to outwardly demonstrate power and the need for the final word,” Ms. Munimus said. Not so the female governors. “They know that power is needed to bring about policy, but along the way, it is important to cooperate, to create policy with others. That is the identifying factor of this style.”

Since 2010, another Social Democrat, Hannelore Kraft, has governed North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state and one known for decades as much for its old boys’ political network as for its heavy industry.

Ms. Kraft was forced to settle right after her election for a minority government that relied on the support of political foes to pass legislation. Together with the deputy governor, Sylvia Löhrmann from the Greens, Ms. Kraft dubbed her government the “invitation coalition” and got to work.

Two years later, her fragile constellation collapsed, and Ms. Kraft faced off against a former minister from Ms. Merkel’s conservative party in fresh elections last May. Not only did Ms. Kraft retain her governorship; she won a clear majority in the state legislature for government with the Greens.

Many Germans would have liked to see Ms. Kraft run as the Social Democratic candidate, challenging Ms. Merkel for the chancellorship, in September elections. A recent survey by Statista pollsters showed the 51-year-old the third most popular politician in the country, after Ms. Merkel and Joachim Gauck, the German president.

Instead, the Social Democrats chose Peer Steinbrück, whose straight-talking style is more associated with the cigar-chomping era of Gerhard Schröder and who raised eyebrows when he recently told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the chancellor was popular “because she gets a women’s bonus.”

Heidi Simonis, Germany’s first female governor — she led the state of Schleswig-Holstein for 12 years — disputed that view. In a recent interview from her home in Kiel, she cited courage, capability in a specific field or overall political experience as qualities displayed by the women who now hold office in the states.

“Just being a woman is no longer enough to earn a female bonus in Germany,” said Ms. Simonis, also a member of the Social Democrats.

Ms. Simonis served as finance minister for her state before she was elected governor in the wake of Schleswig-Holstein’s worst political scandal since World War II. At the time, she said, her focus was not on her gender, but the challenges at hand.

“I just said, ‘I have a job to do here, whether they love me or don’t love me,’ although of course I preferred that they love me,” Ms. Simonis said. “That was enough to last for 12 years, although it has nothing to do with nice eyes or being a woman. You have to achieve a bit more for people to give you their vote.”

In addition to now running 4 of the 16 states and holding nearly a third of all seats in the national Parliament, women in Germany still face challenges when it comes to equality in the workplace and the business world.

Women in Germany earn roughly 22 percent less than their male counterparts in comparable positions, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Despite efforts in recent years to help better combine the demands of full-time work with raising a family, women in Germany still remain underrepresented in the highest management positions. Only 4 percent of seats on the management boards of the country’s top companies were held by women last year, according to the German Institute for Economic Research.

On the flip side, more than half of the 7.4 million lowest-paying jobs in Germany are held by women, who often earn less than €8.50, or $11, per hour, the rate that — if it is up to Ms. Dreyer — will become the national minimum wage.

Ms. Dreyer has already argued in favor of the minimum wage as the state labor minister. She reasons that women would be among the main beneficiaries if the country broke with its tradition of allowing each industry to set its own pay agreements and instead enacted a national minimum wage.

Taking advantage of her newness on the national scene, she made the issue a top priority and got support from other states to push through the measure on March 1. “Article 3 of the German Constitution ensures the equal rights of men and women,” Ms. Dreyer told the Bild am Sonntag, a popular Sunday tabloid. “As long as women in Germany are discriminated against, I will fight for their rights.”