Quorum for women

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The women's quorum is a weakened form of the women's quorum , which should be achieved through a quorum .

The quorum for women is intended to increase the proportion of women in certain positions, without, however, making mandatory regulations on the proportion of women. It is used in particular in internal party elections of the CDU , but is also used in communal bodies, for example in the youth welfare committees in Hamburg . The increase in the proportion of women is to be achieved through various measures that are intended to induce the decisive body through appeals and sanctions to give women sufficient consideration in personnel decisions.

Quorum for women in the CDU

Design

In Section 15 of the statute of the CDU in Germany, equality between women and men is regulated. The duty to achieve equality is imposed on all boards of the party in their area of ​​responsibility. In addition to this general obligation to enforce equality, the specific design of the women's quorum in the CDU is regulated: women should be at least one third involved in party offices in the CDU and in public mandates. In the case of group elections within the party as well as in the case of candidates for parliamentary elections, at least one third of the candidates to be elected should be women.

If this quorum is not achieved in internal party elections, the first ballot is to be declared invalid and another ballot to be held, whereby further candidate proposals may be made. This is where the idea of ​​the quorum comes into play, which starts with the admissibility of a vote depending on certain conditions. The second ballot is valid even if the quorum is again not achieved. If the quorum is not achieved in the list of candidates, it must be explained to the meeting and reasons why it could not be achieved. The quorum for women is higher than the proportion of women among party members of 25.4 percent.

history

The women's quorum in the CDU was initially proposed at the CDU's federal party conference in Karlsruhe in 1995, but could not reach the majority of the delegates there and was rejected. Thereupon, at the federal party congress in Hanover in 1996, a vote was taken again on the women's quorum, with a majority in favor of introducing the quorum on a trial basis for five years. At the end of the five years, the federal party conference in Dresden in 2001 voted again on the women's quorum and decided to introduce it for an unlimited period.

Evaluation of the measure

The introduction of a quorum for women should represent a compromise between the introduction of a quota for women and the renunciation of measures to increase the proportion of women. The scheme was developed to avoid the disadvantages of both methods and to use the advantages. For example, foregoing measures to increase the proportion of women can lead to women not being elected by election assemblies despite their qualifications or not standing as candidates for these elections. On the other hand, the introduction of a fixed quota for women can also mean that, due to a lack of female applicants, women who are not sufficiently capable have to be chosen to meet the quota. These are then often pejoratively referred to as " quota women ".

In the CDU, the quorum for women tends to increase the proportion of women in higher levels of leadership of the party, while the measure has less effect on the lower party levels. The primary reason is the lack of female candidates at the local level.

swell

  1. ↑ Hamburg Law for the Implementation of Book Eight of the Social Code (Child and Youth Welfare), AG SGB VIII of June 25, 1997.
  2. ↑ CDU Brochure Women's Quorum ( Memento of the original from November 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 854 kB) accessed December 16, 2012.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.cdu.de

literature

  • van Quaquebeke, Niels, & Schmerling, Anja: Cognitive equality: How the mere depiction of well-known female and male executives influences our implicit thinking about leadership. Journal of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 54, pp. 91-104, 2010.