In the future, as many women as men should be represented in the Bavarian state parliament, and the same number of female and male ministers should govern the Free State. To this end, the Greens plan to change the electoral law and the constitution. On Friday they presented the corresponding draft law. “Politics that are made more from the perspective of women are better policies,” says state parliamentary group leader Katharina Schulze.
The Greens are planning two crucial changes to ensure parity in parliament. On the one hand, the number of constituencies is to be roughly halved to 44 and, in future, to be directly represented by two people. Each party should nominate a duo, the voters will receive two first votes. Then the man with the most votes and the woman with the most votes move into the state parliament. This could lead to a duo from different parties representing a constituency.
Secondly, list mandates are to be allocated on an equal basis, i.e. those for which voters cast their second vote. Parties do not have to draw up lists that are alternately filled with women and men, but after the election the list mandates are distributed alternately to the candidates with the most votes. So there is, so to speak, a track for men and a track for women, which could also lead to a woman with fewer votes than a man getting a mandate because the best-elected men and women get their chance. However, if the third-elected woman has fewer votes than the fourth-elected man, the mandate is still hers.
Something like this can already happen today, for example if a candidate gets a large number of votes but his party fails to meet the five percent clause. And even in the CSU, which has been accustomed to success, there were such cases, for example when the former president of the state parliament, Barbara Stamm, who has died in the meantime, got a huge number of votes in Würzburg, but still did not get a mandate because the CSU had enough for almost all direct candidates, but not for more list places.
Silke Laskowski, professor of public law, international law and European law at the University of Kassel and member of the Bundestag’s electoral law commission, called the bill “innovative and completely new”. She prepared a legal opinion and was convinced that the draft would stand up to constitutional review. The law pursues a constitutionally legitimized goal, namely equal rights for women and men, so the achievement of the goal cannot be unconstitutional.
Right at the beginning, Katharina Schulze referred to the constitution, in which Article 118 not only stipulates equal rights, but also states: “The state promotes the actual implementation of equal rights for women and men and works towards eliminating existing disadvantages.” A male-dominated parliament and an 18-member state government with only five women is such a disadvantage.
There are currently 205 members of the Bavarian state parliament, 25 more than provided for in the constitution, which is due to the Bavarian electoral law with its compensation and overhang mandates. But not even a third of parliamentarians are women. Only 55 women are represented in the state parliament, 37 of them from the Greens and SPD alone.
And it doesn’t look as if the proportion of women will increase significantly after the state elections in October. Only the Greens and the SPD fill their lists on a strictly equal basis. There are signs of a major upheaval in the CSU, with many older MPs no longer standing or no longer being nominated. Their successors are usually younger – but again men. And because the CSU has won almost all direct mandates in recent decades, but hardly any list candidates have made it into parliament, it is of no use if one or the other woman is prominently placed there but has no chance.
CSU boss Markus Söder cannot be satisfied with the situation, after all he started with the premise of making the CSU younger and more female. “Our draft law will result in an oath,” said Schulze. Voluntariness is not enough, now it can be shown who is serious about equality. In 2019, the Greens started such an attempt. He did not get a majority in the state parliament.