In the CDU, the pressure is growing on the chairman Friedrich Merz to do more for a larger number of women in membership and in leadership positions.

Demands for a binding quota for women are increasing.

CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja spoke out in favor of introducing a “binding quota” at the next CDU party conference.

Czaja told the newspaper "Bild am Sonntag" that "half of our population is female".

Knowing that they are in leadership positions in equal proportions “does every organization good”.

Eckhart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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So far, the statutes of the CDU only stipulate that women should hold "at least a third" of party offices and public mandates.

The Structure and Statutes Commission had already proposed in 2020 to gradually introduce an equal number of men and women.

This has not yet been decided by a party congress.

Klöckner: They don't look good when there are women

The chairwoman of the women's union of the CDU, Annette Widmann-Mauz, asked Merz to push the commission's decisions "offensively".

"Without a quota, we will not be able to bring more women forward in the party," said the CDU member of the Bundestag to the magazine "Der Spiegel".

The CDU politician Julia Klöckner, who recently gave up the presidency of the Rhineland-Palatinate state party, so that since then no state association has been led by a woman, said about the proportion of women in the CDU: “We don’t look good there.” That is “none beautiful development".

A quota for women is therefore necessary.

"I was skeptical about quotas for a long time, but I admit quite clearly: It won't happen by itself." Klöckner demanded that if the quota could not be met, posts should remain vacant: "For example, if it is in a district association there are three deputy positions and it is not possible to get a woman to fill them, then in future one must remain free until this can be done.”

After the CDU's election defeat in Saarland, Merz, who has repeatedly described a quota as the "second best solution", announced that he would work to change the small number of women in the CDU.