In her new book Freisinnig Kristina Schröder writes that outrage is not her “core competence”. Her press spokesman was already desperate about that, back when she was still family minister under Angela Merkel. “You just have to be more outraged!” He told her every International Women’s Day – and fell on deaf ears.
Now three men are competing for the chairmanship of the CDU. Doesn’t that really bother you? After all, you always end up with her when it comes to women in the Union. Here, she reveals who of the candidates she supports – and whether she might be running next time when the executive chair in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus becomes vacant again.
Friday: Ms. Schröder, are you actually a feminist?
Kristina Schröder: It depends on how you define that. If that means “equality”, then I am one. But in Germany it means “equality”, usually parity – and that’s not my thing at all. Equal opportunities at the start, yes, equal results at the finish, no.
One of your first official acts in the ministry was to rename the department for “Equal Opportunities” to “Equal Rights” …
No! That was just a consideration of mine. But then I looked into such astonished faces there that I didn’t take up this fight as well. Maybe that was a mistake. That would have made it clear how I tick right from the start.
Back then, you pushed the childcare allowance forward. This was decried as a “stove bonus” because it encouraged women not to go to work.
I would deny it completely! All parents of one- and two-year-old children had the choice: I take the daycare place, to which I have also introduced the legal entitlement and which is subsidized by the state with an average of 1,000 euros per month – or the 150 euros cash benefit and organize the childcare privately.
You yourself had a child during your tenure. At that time, a paparazzo from “Bild” was standing in front of the hospital.
Yes. Then they kindly called my press office and said: We just wanted to warn you in advance – it will be printed tomorrow.
Isn’t that misogynistic? You would never have done it with a man.
Oh come on! Now let’s not pretend. I also looked at the pictures of Duchess Kate getting out of the hospital. After giving birth, a woman is more exciting than a man. Is your belly still fat? Such curiosity is human.
Kristina Schröder, 44, was Federal Minister for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth from 2009 to 2013. Since 2020 she has been the “ambassador” of the neoliberal initiative New Social Market Economy. Together with Andreas Rödder, she heads the bourgeois think tank Republik21. Your new book Freisinnig was published by Claudius-Verlag (183 pp., 18 €)
But haven’t male cabinet colleagues also had children?
Let me see if I can think of one. Hm. Yes, Daniel Bahr! He became a father during his tenure.
Were there any photographers standing in front of the hospital?
No, don’t think so. Although he was also at the Charité, as far as I know. But I wouldn’t make a man-woman box out of it. Do you remember Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg? Back then, he staged himself in private without end.
But he wanted that too. That is the code of honor among journalists in the capital: As long as the politicians do not address their private life themselves, it is taboo!
True, this consensus has been pretty much exhausted with me. At the time, I worked with Kai Diekmann from the image talked about. He replied analogously: If the family minister is starting a family, then it’s political.
Do you think so too?
I already understand what he means. On the other hand, a health minister is not asked which medical check-up he has already done (laughs).
You even had to change churches on your wedding day because paparazzi were waiting in front of it …
Yes, that was bad.
After one legislative period, you stopped working as a minister in 2013. More time for the family was more important to you.
I agree. A year earlier I had therefore taken Angela Merkel aside in the Bundestag. She said she thought it was good that I told her. But she could only advise me to be silent about it.
Wouldn’t it have been your job as Minister of Family Affairs to make sure that work and family are under one roof?
As a minister you can get your job and family under one roof. You earn well, you can afford a nanny …
Then why did you stop?
Because I didn’t want that under these conditions. As a minister, I had to interrupt three out of four summer vacations. Eight weeks after my daughter was born, I got fully back on board – she was still an infant at the time. Incidentally, MPs are the only professional group that has no right to parental leave. Then my daughter came to the daycare and I had reserved an extra week to get used to it. Just the first day, a Spiegel– Title published: “Family policy in Germany has failed” or something like that. I stood in the daycare’s locker room for hours and talked on the phone. My communication strategy agreed with the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus and the Chancellery …
Annalena Baerbock also talked a lot about how she organized childcare.
Yes, I argued with my mother about it the other day. She said it wouldn’t work at all, as Foreign Minister Baerbock had no more time for her children. I then said to her: “Mommy, that’s none of our business!”
In the CDU you don’t have that problem. Only men run for the party chairmanship. Now that Merkel is gone, is it over with women in the Union?
This is also such a strange way of looking at things. In 2018, AKK prevailed against two men. There is Karin Prien, the very prominent education minister in Schleswig-Holstein. Three men are now running for the office of party leader. But I can’t see any regularity there.
Do you know this picture of Helge Braun after he introduced his “team”? He is in the middle, next to Serap Guler and Nadine Schön. He wants to make one general secretary and the other head of “program and structural development” – whatever that is.
Well, the program commission. That is an important thing!
Okay, but the picture was devastating: The beefy man generously distributes posts to his girls. As with Kohl back then …
Precisely because I know Nadine Schön well, I know how good she is. But I see what you mean. With the SPD it was much more blatant! When they made their membership decision about the party leadership, there were men everywhere: Scholz, Pistorius, Stegner, Lauterbach. They were desperately looking for a partner. Because it had to be a woman. As far as I remember, Gesine Schwan was the only one who stood up there on her own.
Sent by you – but let’s stay with the Union. Why isn’t Güler running himself?
I don’t know her well enough to judge that. I suppose personal reasons play a role. This is really a “killer job”. It is more exhausting than any ministerial office.
The CDU chairmanship is more exhausting than any ministerial office?
Maybe not every one. But as a minister you are more flexible in terms of time. You can also say: If the event cannot be rescheduled for the afternoon, I’ll be there from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. And at 7:02 p.m. I was actually in the car. You cannot do that with 16 sovereign state associations.
Not to run, so these are individual decisions of the CDU women? It doesn’t matter that we are dealing with a party three-quarters of which are male?
Now you are making a male-female thing out of it again. I believe that there is no such thing as an objective political interest that you only have because you are a woman. Maybe a couple of points, because you can have children and are more likely to be a victim of physical violence. Furthermore, I don’t see any collective gender interest.
Well, I just thought: All those men with dark ties who haven’t gotten rid of Merkel for 16 years. Now comes the male reaction from the CDU.
I ask you! Take a look at Helge Braun and Norbert Röttgen: That is really not a “reaction” …
There is still Friedrich Merz.
Yes, he is the only one who really wants to change the course of the Union.
Do you support the candidacy?
Hm. I have to think about whether I want to tell you that.
Yes, no stress.
I think we now need a party that is more profiled in terms of content and confidently formulates its own positions. That’s why I’m for Friedrich Merz, yes. He also brings something with him that has been pretty much lost in the CDU: Enjoyment of ideological debate.
You can say that out loud: In 1997 Merz voted in the Bundestag against rape in marriage becoming a criminal offense …
Yes. The Conservatives were wrong on this point. But Friedrich Merz has become much more socio-politically liberal. For example, I don’t feel that he still has a problem with “marriage for all”. You can ask him.
There was also a woman who would have liked to become the CDU chairwoman: Sabine Buder. But it wasn’t even supported by its own Brandenburg district association.
It also had no national political profile. A man would have failed just as much.
Do you know Buder?
Nope. She?
No. I am not in the CDU.
Well, it can also be a good thing. But almost nobody in the party knew her.
If the CDU loses the state elections next year – in Saarland, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein – someone will have to come back for the chairmanship. This could be your big hour !?
I have been asked about this occasionally lately. And I’m happy to still have a political voice – with my column in the world for example. But in my current life situation, with three small children, I really can’t imagine that.
Peer Steinbrück once said that he did not want to become Chancellor. A few years later he did run for office.
Yes, then ask me again in 20 years!
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