In the new Parliament of Germany, women will be a rarest view

Two days after a coalition of conservatives won the federal elections of Germany last month, the governor of Bavaria went to Instagram to say that the party was “ready for political change” and published a group image of the probable future chancellor, Friedrich Merz, with five other leaders.

He photo It seemed to suggest that a changed Germany will be significantly as the country of yesteryear: it shows six white medium -sized white men sitting around a sandwiches. The only apparent concession to modern sensitivity was that half of them do not wear ties.

Three and a half years after the only woman to serve as a retired chancellor, German national policy seems to be going back when it comes to diversity and gender parity. While in the United States, the new administration has actively bewitching the programs ofi, in Germany the change seems to be less deliberate. But it is no less striking.

The German Parliament has always been more masculine and less diverse than the population it represents, and the new one that will swear on Tuesday will be more masculine and, compared to society as a whole, less diverse than the previous one. Only 32 percent of the 630 new legislators are women, a 35 percent drop when the last Parliament was formed in 2021.

In a country where society has sometimes appeared to move away from traditional gender roles, the number of women in the highest body chosen has stagnated since 2013, when it reached a maximum of 36 percent. The president of Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said this in a recent celebration of Women’s Day.

“When our democracy has a problem with women, then our country has a problem with democracy,” Steinmeier said. In a speech, he pointed out that even if each woman chosen from all the country’s parties vote together as a block, they would not reach the third minority necessary to block changes in the Constitution.

A reason for the erosion of the presence of women in the halls of power is Germany’s political drift to the right, where parties tend to have less legislator.

In Parliament, Bundestag, women represent only 12 percent of the hard -wing alternative for Germany (known as AFD); 23 percent of the conservative Christian Democratic Union of Mr. Merz; 25 percent of his Bávaro Solo Brother Party, the Christian Social Union; and 42 percent among the social democrats on the left.

Only among the smallest parties of Parliament, the Greens and Die Linke, both on the left, are female parliamentarians in most.

When Olaf Scholz formed his cabinet in 2021, he promised to appoint as many women as men as men. That balance remained in place until Christine Lambrecht, the Minister of Defense, was forced to resign after several false steps, and was replaced by a man.

Mr. Merz has cited the mistakes of Mrs. Lambrecht to explain why, when he appoints a new government led by the conservative, he will not strive for parity.

“With that, we would not be making women favors,” he said in a television interview At the end of last year. The government is weeks of being announced.

Mechthild Heil, who directs a group of women in Mr. Merz’s party, does not agree.

After taking note of the shortage of women’s voices in coalition conversations, he became public with his concerns about the subordinate role that women play in the party, writing a letter to Mr. Merz and demanding that women have 50 percent of the leadership roles in Parliament.

“I can give him many examples of really competent women who are not being heard, who are not even sitting in the negotiation teams now,” said Heil. Without women present during the negotiations, he said, important issues could be lost.

Mrs. Heil then explained why she had decided to make public.

“We are always told that we are silent, to solve these problems, but we have heard these arguments for years and years and nothing changes,” he said.

Andrea Römmele, a political scientist from the Hetie School of Government in Berlin and a great observer of German politics, says that one of the reasons why so few women are represented is that the group of candidates is relatively small. Many women, he said, have to deal with dual pressures of work and raise a family.

“You can’t underestimate how intensive political work is,” he said.

Another problem, he says, is that many networks within political parties, especially when it comes to the Christian Democratic Union, formed years ago, when even fewer women were in a position of power.

“It’s surprising when we now notice how far we are suddenly,” he said.