“Politics is far too serious a matter to be left to men alone.” With this quote from Käte Strobel, the grande dame of the Bavarian SPD, the film “The Unbowed” ends, which tells the story of politicians in the days of the Bonn Republic. As pioneers, they were often not taken seriously by their colleagues and fought against sexual discrimination.
“As soon as I saw the film, I knew I wanted to show it in Unterföhring,” says Tanja Gernet (SPD). She is the chairwoman of the Working Group of Social Democratic Women (AsF) in Unterföhring. “Because everything that the film shows is still there today,” says Gernet. “At the municipal level, women are often ridiculed.” She has heard sayings like “I focus on quality instead of parity” from many men. Attention must be drawn to this, which is why Gernet wanted to realize the idea of showing the film in Unterföhring, which she did last week when around 100 interested people came. “However, not in the name of the SPD, but in the name of women,” said Gernet. That’s why she turned to Christine Bayer (CDU), chairwoman of the Unterföhring Women’s Union, and Julia Priese (Greens), local spokeswoman for the Greens. Both were immediately enthusiastic about the idea of organizing the evening together.
And not only the two, but also many Unterföhringer women and a few Unterföhringer were impressed. “We didn’t think that so many people would come to this evening,” announced Gernet, visibly moved from the stage of the community center. A sales table from the local bookstore was set up in the foyer for the reception. Let’s name Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt and Margarete Stokowski adorned the book covers. Sparkling wine was served. Gernet, Bayer and Priese ran around – greeted, waved and smiled. Despite the seriousness of the subject, they brought a certain hilarity to the event. “With events like this I want to get young people interested in politics,” said Priese. “And also make women enjoy it.”
Ruth Müller, deputy leader of the SPD parliamentary group in the state parliament, and Claudia Köhler, budget spokeswoman for the Greens parliamentary group in the Maximilianeum, should also contribute to this. After the film, the two members of the state parliament discussed the status quo: What is the position of women in politics? Rich in anecdotes, they reported on their experiences in the state parliament – some funny, some serious. And drew attention to the fact that the fight for the fair participation of women in politics is far from over and should therefore be continued.
This should also be done at the local level. That is why Gernet, Bayer and Priese founded a non-partisan alliance for Unterföhring for the first time for this event. “It will do the place good if we network across party lines,” said Priese. It’s about appearing as women and being visible, Bayer added. Although she has never experienced pithy sayings like the ones Tanja Gernet reported, doing politics in the interests of women is still a “matter of the heart” for her, said Bayer.
Bayer explained that Unterföhring was in a good position to do so. Her party, the CSU, is represented equally in the municipal council and the division of the entire municipal council would show that women are sufficiently represented in politics in Unterföhring.
In fact, the CSU is represented in the Unterföhring municipal council by Manfred Axenbeck, Marianne Rader, Lorenz Ilmberger and Claudia Leitner. So by two women and two men. The entire municipal council consists of 13 men and 11 women. The proportion of women is 46 percent and well above the national average. In 2019, this was 27 percent in city and municipal councils, as determined by a study by the Evangelical Working Group on Families.
This is gratifying, said Priese, but there is still a lot to be done in Unterföhring. She refers to the mayors of the community: Andreas Kemmelmeyer, Manuel Prieler and Johannes Mecke. “If we already have three, it can’t be that there are three men,” said Priese.
And a look at history reveals: Unterföhring has never had a first mayor. But this lack of representation of women in top municipal offices is not characteristic of Unterföhring. In 2019, only eight percent of all local chiefs were female mayors nationwide. And a letter written in the generic masculine could almost be invited to a mayoral meeting of the heads of town hall in the district of Munich. With Mindy Konwitschny (Höhenkirchen-Siegertbrunn), Susanna Millennium (Pullach) and Babara Bogner (Sauerlach), only three of the 29 municipalities in the entire district have female mayors.