FDP MP Jensen: “Women are attacked harder”

In politics there is a male understanding of power – and mistakes are not talked about: The youngest MP, Gyde Jensen, about her first four years in the Bundestag, Baerbock and a deleted tweet.

tagesschau.de: Four years ago you entered the Bundestag as the youngest member of the Bundestag. How disenchanted are you today?

Gyde Jensen: I’m actually not at all disillusioned. I was rather pleasantly surprised by how many options I have here as a new Member of Parliament. I also really appreciate the fact that I am allowed to do this work for a certain period of time. I’m surprised how slowly the mills often grind here. That is difficult to explain to people outside of the Bundestag cosmos.

tagesschau.de: Concrete?

Jensen: Corona example. The possibilities of being able to meet digitally in the Bundestag are limited – for security reasons, for data protection reasons, but also for user reasons. That made working in Parliament difficult. I expect the Bundestag to set a good example here. After all, every company had to do it.

tagesschau.de: Do you remember your first day in the Bundestag?

Jensen: The FDP was in a special situation because we had no predecessor parliamentary group. We were all new. There were no parliamentary groups, no employees, no offices. The first group meeting took place in a makeshift meeting room. All of them had very different experiences, from which we generated swarm knowledge. And there was a boot camp to swap ideas and learn the basics for the Bundestag. It all ran parallel to the exploratory talks.

tagesschau.de: How disappointed were you when governance didn’t work out after all?

Jensen: A little bit. I expected “Jamaica” to work – just like in Schleswig-Holstein. But a successful negotiation depends on a lot of things. Not only in terms of content, but also in people who can get along with each other. And so it was a tough decision – but in the end it was probably the right one.

“Sure, we have to be more women”

tagesschau.de: What exactly have you achieved as a member of parliament in this electoral term?

Jensen: As chairman of the committee for human rights and humanitarian aid, I was able to sharpen the foreign policy profile of the FDP. Dealing with the People’s Republic of China in particular is a topic that has preoccupied us a lot. In response to our pressure, the federal government has changed its attitude and is no longer speechless about the oppression of the Uyghurs and the events in Hong Kong.

tagesschau.de: And how did you fail? Keyword: power structures, old men …

Jensen: Sure, we have to have more women in parliament – but I wouldn’t consider that a failure just yet. Specifically, my plan to travel with the committee to the Chinese province of Xinjiang failed. We were not prepared to forego criticism. My impression was that this played a role for the Chinese authorities in not issuing the travel permit.

tagesschau.de: At the moment there is a lot of talk about mistakes, for example with the Greens and their candidate for chancellor. When Merkel admitted the “Easter rest” as a political mistake, the excitement was huge. Why are mistakes so seldom admitted in politics?

Jensen: Maybe because then people quickly call for consequences. Not every mistake has to lead to resignation. It is much more a matter of logically explaining why a decision was made and how. But obviously there is an understanding in politics that it is not proper to make mistakes. That’s why you don’t talk about it. I think that’s a big mistake. It paints the wrong picture of politics.

tagesschau.de: The FDP made mistakes in the Kemmerich case in Thuringia and, in retrospect, admitted this. Shortly after his election, you yourself congratulated Kemmerich with the AfD’s vote as Prime Minister in a tweet. A mistake?

Jensen: Definitely. It’s the only tweet so far that I’ve deleted. And not because a legitimate shitstorm began, but because the tweet was wrong. I hadn’t seen the situation at all and was hasty. I still do this now and then because I wonder how this could happen to me. Most people feel the same way when they make mistakes that they are ashamed of. And that’s why, keyword error culture: If you then admit errors, it has to be good at some point. Then stepping down is not necessary.

tagesschau.de: Is this election campaign particularly rough?

Jensen: I don’t think so. He is currently one-sided, at the expense of the Greens. That certainly has something to do with the fact that Annalena Baerbock is a woman. Some criticism of her is also justified, but the personal hostility is just not okay. Nor do I participate in a way that few women do in the first place. Because that’s exactly what it is that discourages women from striving for public office. That just doesn’t make you want to go into politics. Men may be more pain-free. We lose exciting minds as a result. And it is intended to be so short-term: For fear of a possible election failure, the political opponent is personally defamed.

tagesschau.de: Are women politicians approached differently than men?

Jensen: Yes, women are attacked much harder than men in the digital world, often below the belt. And there is more unrest in the Bundestag when women are at the lectern. The FDP parliamentary group has to sit next to the AfD – and there are derogatory comments about women when women speak.

tagesschau.de: Your own party, the FDP, is considered a young men party. Why actually?

Jensen: Politics always has to do with people. The name Christian Lindner comes up quite often. He is a role model for many new male members. We have a lot of great women in the FDP, but none who have this kind of attention. I also warn against always asking the women in the FDP why there are so few women in the FDP.

tagesschau.de: What exactly has to change?

Jensen: The process is running. Even if I sometimes wish it would go faster. We have a new federal board of which around 40 percent are women. The party is more than just the chairman, the deputies and the general secretary. And there are women – also in the FDP – who no longer want to take on responsibility. Men often go into politics to become something. With women, the reasons for entering politics are often more complex. I think a lot of people just want to change something specifically, in terms of content – and that can also be done from the second row, sometimes even better.

tagesschau.de: Women don’t want power? Without power, however, hardly anything can be achieved in politics.

Jensen: In politics we are still too much stuck in old role models – and that includes a more masculine understanding of power. But we can learn a lot from them: Men are better networkers, women are more the lone fighters who do not stand together as well. There is no one female way of doing politics. Of course I want to make a difference. But maybe I deal with it differently than the majority of my male colleagues.

tagesschau.de: Be specific. The FDP could well be involved in the government after the general election. You want to rule, don’t you?

Jensen: Definitely. I would very much like to take responsibility. After four years of intensive learning, I feel like putting these ideas into practice, especially in the field of foreign policy.

No majority for women’s quota

tagesschau.de: How can the proportion of women in politics be increased? Do we need a quota?

Jensen: For the Bundestag I consider a quota for women to be constitutionally difficult. Nevertheless, we urgently need to deal with this issue politically. Anything else would be a denial of reality. And this debate also takes place in the parties.

tagesschau.de: In the FDP you still have to drill thick boards …

Jensen: That’s true. But that doesn’t deter me. There is currently no majority in the party for a women’s quota. I respect that too. But such positions are not set in stone.

tagesschau.de: Not only women are underrepresented in the Bundestag. People with a migration background or non-academics are hardly represented there either. So one can hardly speak of a “cross-section of society”. How much reality does Parliament depict?

Jensen: Berlin is a bit far, the Bundestag is certainly a bubble. But as a young MEP, I also have to be able to represent my 95-year-old great-grandmother. Maybe it doesn’t work as well as it does with other women my age and in a similar family situation. But it’s not that women only represent women well and men only represent men. It is important that we have to encourage more people with very different life experiences to get involved in political parties. Politics competes for the precious commodity of time with many other and possibly more attractive offers. As active politicians, we also have a responsibility not to send a deterrent picture of politics.