The gender ban on schools, universities and authorities announced by Markus Söder in his government statement is met with resistance from some of those affected. Since mid-December, more than 7,000 people have signed an open letter initiated by the State Conference of Women and Equal Opportunities Representatives at Bavarian Universities (LaKoF). Elke Wolf, spokeswoman for LaKoF, is positively surprised by the large number of signatories. “It shows that the topic moves people,” she says.
Among others, the Education and Science Union (GEW) Bavarian State Association and the Verdi Bavarian State District were among the first to sign. Many other signatures come from university circles in the Free State. For example, the Munich politics professor Carlo Masala, known from talk shows, and Dietmar Süß, historian and professor at the University of Augsburg, signed the letter. People from the artistic environment also support the call, such as the equal opportunities officer of the Bavarian State Opera, Stephanie Bachhuber, and director Marcus H. Rosenmüller. And the signatures also come from outside Bavaria – for example, there are professors from Giessen, Amsterdam and Vienna.
A ban on gender would be a step backwards, the letter says. It contradicts the “principles of equal treatment enshrined in the constitution”. At the latest since the Personal Status Act (PstG) Paragraph 22 Paragraph 3 from 2018, it has been expressly legally decided that there are more than two genders. This results in the obligation to express oneself in a gender-equitable manner in all areas of society. Schools, colleges and administrations should be free to do this. There are “various linguistic solutions” that have already established themselves “in many areas of society”.
Science Minister Markus Blume (CSU) criticized the initiators of the open letter. They “obviously consciously tried to give the impression that people or groups were being disadvantaged through misinterpretation.” Your claims are false. The state government is committed to gender-equitable language. The official regulations apply to universities according to the recommendations of the Council for German Spelling – “no more and no less”. However, Blume speaks out clearly against “linguistic artificiality and language pedagogical tendencies”.
When asked by the SZ, the Ministry of Science did not comment on the specific details of the announced gender ban. How the use of language is to be controlled and sanctioned also remains unclear. This is also the case with the first signatories of the open letter, says Elke Wolf after a meeting with them on Wednesday. You will now probably write a personal letter to the Prime Minister asking for more details. Only then could the original signatories decide how to proceed. According to Wolf, their first priority is to maintain the status quo – i.e. no special characters in official documents – and to prevent any tightening.