CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja has criticized the way his party treats women in its own ranks. “Self-critically, we have to admit that we have often used these exemplary women as fig leaves in a male-dominated party,” he wrote in a guest article for the news site “Watson” on International Women’s Day on March 8. “It’s not about putting female pioneers in the shop window.”
It’s about creating a real and calm normality, wrote Czaja. The party overlooked the fact that exemplary women need a “special fighting spirit, a special discipline and a special hardness and willpower to prevail in the end,” he continued.
There is no shortage of female role models in his party, emphasized the CDU politician, referring to former Chancellor Angela Merkel and the first female minister in the Federal Republic, Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt.
He also appealed to men on International Women’s Day: “The emancipation of women should consequently be followed by the emancipation of men,” it said. According to Czaja, women will and should continue to fight for their rights. “But it’s time that we men stopped blocking each other. Inside and outside of politics,” he emphasized.
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