100 years of women's suffrage
Equal Opportunities Officer of the City of Chemnitz calls for an election - video and audio support the call
For one hundred years, women have been allowed to actively participate in the political discourse in Germany - this means being able to influence the shaping of society. A very long and hard struggle was necessary for this, which hardly anyone thinks about today. We have come to take our democratic rights for granted.
Unfortunately, however, equality between women and men has only been realised on paper. In "real" life, there are still many areas in which women are disadvantaged. They are more frequently exposed to domestic violence than men, have lower average pensions and are rarely represented in very highly paid jobs, such as on the supervisory boards of listed companies. They also still shoulder the greater share of unpaid care work.
They are also underrepresented where laws are passed and relevant decisions are made for the people as a whole: namely in the federal, state and local parliaments. In the current Bundestag, the proportion of women is 36.5 per cent, in Chemnitz city council it is 30.4 per cent.
This should and must change. That is why the Equal Opportunities Officer of the City of Chemnitz, Pia Hamann, has launched an appeal aimed at all women, calling on them to take part in the upcoming elections. As women also vote for women more often (source: Rohner/Beerheide in "100 Jahre Frauenwahlrecht - Ziel erreicht! ...and what next?"), gender relations in politics and therefore all decisions made in parliaments can be organised more fairly.
A video and two audios were produced for this purpose.
The video can be viewed on the City of Chemnitz YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/StadtChemnitz
The audios can be listened to and downloaded: