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Merkel's party 'not attracting women'

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Merkel's party 'not attracting women'
Photo: DPA

Despite being led by Germany’s first woman chancellor Angela Merkel, her Christian Democratic Party (CDU) has a problem attracting female voters, according to one of its regional leaders.

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Issues that concern women must be given more attention, to try to get them to join the party and vote for it at elections, according to Thomas Strobl, the party’s leader in the south-western state of Baden-Württtemberg.

Speaking this weekend, just over a year after the party suffered a historic defeat in his state in an election which handed power to a Green-led coalition, Strobl pointed to figures which showed the CDU obviously needed more than a woman chancellor to attract women voters.

He said of the 70,000 or so CDU members in the south-west CDU, only 22 percent were women. In the federal party things were not much better, with only 25.6 percent of the nearly 500,000 members being female.

“For us, this was very clearly shown in the state election results. But in fact it is a problem for the whole of the CDU,” said Strobl.

The state leaders of the party recently turned against a childcare subsidy policy being promoted by the CDU’s Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union. It would pay out money to parents who did not send their children to state-subsidised childcare options, and has been criticised as creating pressure on women to stay at home.

DPA/The Local/hc

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