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Article
Girl Power, Mainstreaming and Critical Mass: Women's Leadership and Policy Paradigm Shift in Germany's Red-Green Coalition, 1998–20021
Journal of Women, Politics & Policy (2005)
  • Joyce Mushaben, University of Missouri–St. Louis
Abstract
Women's increased presence in German government since 1998 testifies to generational change, as well as to the completion of a gender-specific “long march through the institutions.” Securing more than 30% of the Bundestag seats, female lawmakers also reached critical mass in the Red-Green Cabinet, a coalition of the Social Democratic and Green Parties formed in 1998. This study of ministerial feminism, 1998–2002, shows that women are making a difference in Germany; these leaders have initiated paradigm shifts “bigger than the sum of the parts” insofar as national equality policies are reinforced at the European Union level, thanks to gender mainstreaming. Bolstered by new anti-discrimination articles in the Amsterdam Treaty, these women have undertaken strategic reforms in areas of gender and justice; research and technology; family and career; health, welfare and consumer protection; sustainable development, foreign aid, migration and human rights. Women have profited from supranational integration, in part because European Union decision-making builds on an inclusive concept of “power with,” in contrast to the traditional national exercise of “power over.”
Publication Date
October 13, 2005
DOI
10.1300/J501v27n01_09
Citation Information
Joyce Mushaben. "Girl Power, Mainstreaming and Critical Mass: Women's Leadership and Policy Paradigm Shift in Germany's Red-Green Coalition, 1998–20021" Journal of Women, Politics & Policy Vol. 27 (2005) p. 135 - 161
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/joyce-mushaben/24/