After its success in the state elections, the AfD sees itself as well prepared for the federal election. If it weren’t for its pronounced weakness among female voters.
Monday of this week. The AfD leadership invited the press to the party headquarters in Berlin to celebrate the near victory in Brandenburg. Her party achieved a “great result” in the state elections, says chairwoman Alice Weidel. The fact that the SPD narrowly managed to take first place again is due to the campaign by the media and “cartel parties” against the AfD.
Sitting next to Weidel is co-chair Tino Chrupalla, and state chairman René Springer and top candidate Hans-Christoph Berndt have traveled from nearby Potsdam. They and the chairwoman are particularly pleased that the AfD clearly came out ahead of the SPD among younger voters. “We are the party of the future,” says Weidel.
Then it’s the journalists’ turn. As usual, the officials ignore any critical questions – including those about the “deportation song” that the Young Alternative played on Sunday evening at the official AfD election party within earshot of the federal party leadership. “Hey, now it’s happening, we’re deporting them all, all of them!” is the chorus.
Oh, that, says regional leader Springer, smiling gently. “It’s not unusual for young people to test boundaries in political parties. And that’s certainly part of it.” Next topic, please.
And so it goes. But suddenly something surprising happens. After a question that has accompanied the AfD since its founding, an open conflict breaks out on the podium.
The question is: How does the leadership explain that the party is still voted for far less often by women than by men?
The numbers are clear. In Brandenburg, for example, only 24 percent of women voted for the AfD, while the SPD received 33 percent. For men, however, the ratio was the opposite: here the AfD was ahead with 35 percent, while the SPD only received 29 percent.
AfD: What is allegedly in men’s blood
So why does the AfD remain a men’s party? State leader Springer begins to explain: “I believe that it is in men’s blood to fight,” he says. “And we are in a difficult political situation,” so you have to have “a thick skin.” “And I think that this is exactly what has led to the selection mechanism that means men are at the forefront.”
But Springer also has something to say about the nature of the common woman: “What I notice, however, is that more and more women are coming up because the problems ultimately have an impact, namely on the situation in the family because there is no longer enough money, on the children who go to school and are beaten up by a migrant mob in the schoolyard. No mother wants that.”
While Springer says this, Alice Weidel’s face twists. She is visibly angry. “I’ll spare myself the trouble of going into René Springer’s image of women, which I see completely differently in one respect,” she says. “Women are just as much fighters as men, they are in no way inferior!”
AfD has only a small proportion of women in parliaments
The party will therefore launch a “mentoring program” for women, similar to those found in large corporations. This will be “unique” and “no other party has it.” The AfD will also “refine” its program in time for the federal election.
While Weidel says all this, the three AfD men look up into space as indifferently as possible. After all, Springer has merely summed up the retro cliché of the “weaker sex” that is prevalent in the party: the German man goes into political battle while the woman is the mother of many children.
The cliché corresponds to the distribution of roles within the party. The AfD has a female share of 21 percent of its membership, and in the Bundestag faction it is only 12 percent. And what about the new Brandenburg AfD faction? Exactly: only four of the 30 MPs are women.
This is not surprising. After all, the ideal of the “traditional woman” is not only spread in beer tent speeches or internet memes. It is a decision. A look at the AfD’s Brandenburg election manifesto is enough. “We demand the appreciation of traditional lifestyles and the appreciation of the life achievements of women who start families and raise children,” it says. Equality between men and women is “a great good.” But: “We do not see the biological gender bond of humans as a burden, but as a gift.”
The party wants to “consistently punish” violations of the obligation to report an abortion and calls for childcare allowance for the first three years of a child’s life. Quotas for women are rejected as discriminatory.
And Brandenburg is everywhere in the AfD. In Thuringia, where Björn Höcke has been promoting his father-mother-four-children model for years, a campaign ad recently ran that showed the AfD model family alongside remigration and a booming economy. The father drives to work while the mother happily looks after the children and is currently pregnant again.
Weidel: “We all want to realize our potential”
Weidel knows that the AfD is not likely to appeal to the vast majority of women. “Self-fulfillment is at the top of the hierarchy of needs,” she says. “And everyone, not just women, we all want to fulfill ourselves.” That is why women want to work, especially since some, such as single parents, simply have to. That is why it is important to improve the compatibility of work and family in the AfD as well.
But how is that supposed to work if women are reduced primarily to their reproductive function? If you listen to the party, there is silence. The federal office is currently working on a concept, says Weidel’s spokesman when asked, although there is consensus that it is not about quotas or anything like that.
That sounds as vague as it is contradictory. But it fits with the absurd situation that a full-time working woman who is raising two children with her Sri Lankan wife is leading a party of macho men who polemicize against “marriage for all” and even openly live out their homophobia at party conferences.
But Weidel has clearly decided to live among the AfD machos. That is the only way she can stay in power. “You know, I can deal with it. I don’t really care,” she said two years ago when asked how she could stand it all.
Her co-leader Tino Chrupalla even makes it particularly easy for himself. When he was asked a few months ago whether, from the AfD’s point of view, Weidel was also a “traditional woman”, he answered cheerfully: “Why not? Of course. Absolutely!”
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
