Democratic women's initiative

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Democratic Women’s Initiative (DFI) was a feminist organization in the Federal Republic of Germany.

history

The DFI was initiated in the mid-1970s by Alma Kettig , Ingeborg Küster and Elly Steinmann together with women from the new women's movement and unionists. It emerged in 1976 from the '' Initiative Internationales Year of Women '75' '. The main concerns were: "Peace, development and equality" (the motto of the UN year). Local groups were formed in numerous cities that also sought cooperation with peace groups and other social movements. The Democratic Women's Initiative (DFI) was constituted in 1976 “in conscious rejection of the women's centers (..). Like no other women's group, she received a lot of attention and unreserved approval in the DKP's press . Conversely, she also supports all public political actions of the DKP. "

Since 1979, the DFI has published the We Women calendar annually, which was widely used in the women's movement. In 1980 the DFI-Rundbrief was renamed We Women - The Feminist Journal and appeared every two months from 1982. Thematic focal points included a. the enforcement of the right to work and equal pay for women, professional bans, development and peace, § 218, lesbians, foreign women in Germany, women in other countries and cultures as well as the initiative “Women in the Bundeswehr - we say no”. In 1989 the structures of the DFI collapsed, individual local groups still exist today. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the magazine has been run by “We Women - Association for the Promotion of Women’s Journalism e. V. "published.

Political orientation

The DFI represented a socialist- oriented feminism and emphasized social issues. “According to the Constitutional Protection Report of 1978, over a third of the governing body, the 'central working group', were communists. (...) The political orientation of the DFI can also be seen in the fact that a narrower management group that was newly formed in 1986 consists exclusively of DKP members (...), the work of the DFI federal office is in the hands of two DKP members and the DFI sends greetings to DKP party congresses. "This is confirmed by a former member of the DFI:" The central working group of the DFI, based in Cologne, was never elected. Upon closer inspection of the working basis of the DFI, I found that an election is not even planned. The DFI is represented externally by this working group without these women being accountable or being able to be voted out of office. ”This is what the Hamburg journalist Astrid Matthiae reports; she had worked for one and a half years at the Hamburg DFI until she listed the reasons for her departure in an open letter in Courage (magazine) in 1979: “Women's politics is really just a figurehead. Of the five above-mentioned leaflets, one is on women's unemployment, all the others deal (...) with peace and disarmament. (...) If women really took the initiative to do something on topics themselves, they were strangled. "

Astrid Matthiae continues: “The alliance with other women's groups is painstakingly avoided”: Participation in an event on the subject of 'violence against women' was refused because the organizing women's group of the Young Democrats (FDP) took feminist standpoints. The women's day festival, March 8, in which all of Hamburg's larger women's groups took part, was avoided, as was the women's block in the May 1st demonstration. “The DFI is afraid of contact with other women's groups (...) because of their proximity to the DKP. The DKP with its delimitation decisions towards everything and everyone (...) is the reason for this. Not only is every cooperation specifically rejected, but the women's movement is simply ignored, both by the DKP in its IP and by the DKP in the DFI. "

The women's calendar we women was published by the DFI headquarters. “The women's movement does not appear in this calendar, or it is pretended that it consists solely of the DFI and groups of the West German women's peace movement , the Democratic Women's Association of Germany , the international democratic women's federation .” “This calendar is about a pilgrimage to the Pope - among them the co-founder of the DFI - to thank him for his encyclical 'pacem in terris' . (...) Visit the Pope, women, and thank the Church and the Popes for thousands of years of war against women! ”Comments Astrid Matthiae.

Known members

literature

  • Florence Hervé: History of the German Women's Movement . 7th edition PapyRossa-Verlag, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-89438-084-5 (EA Cologne 1982).
  • Florence Hervé (ed.): Women's movement and revolutionary labor movement. Texts on women's emancipation in Germany a. in d. FRG from 1848 - 1980 . Marxist sheets publishing house, Frankfurt am Main 1981

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Florence Hervé: Almost forgotten - the women's peace movement in the FRG , Dossier women's movement, Federal Center for Political Education, November 11, 2008
  2. ↑ Rosemarie Nave-Herz: The history of the women's movement in Germany . Ed .: Lower Saxony State Center for Political Education, Opladen 1994, 4th edition, ISBN 978-3-8100-1250-0 , p. 74.
  3. ↑ Wolfgang Rudzio: The erosion of demarcation: On the relationship between the democratic left and communists in the Federal Republic of Germany . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1988, ISBN 978-3531120454 , p. 25.
  4. ↑ Tailor-made for the DKP: Open letter to the Democratic Women’s Initiative / Astrid Matthiae . - [Electronic ed.]. In: Courage: Berliner Frauenzeitung. - 4 (1979), ISSN 0176-1102 H. 4, pp. 33-35.