Women - men - gender. - Bibliothek der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

10
EDITORIAL
Elisabeth Selbert
to fi ght against a conscious or subconscious world view that is purely
biological when it comes to understanding the differing needs of men
and women.
A glimpse into the past reveals how much women have achieved in a
relatively short timespan in the Federal Republic of Germany. However,
it also reveals that every small step forward had to be fought tooth and
nail. The battle began with the constitutional debate in the parliamentary
council itself. The following wording on the issue of equality almost
made it to the Basic Law: “The law must treat the same equally and difference
according to its nature.” Women were up in arms against the
diction of this sentence and there was a wave of vehement protests,
supported by even conservative newspapers. The phrase would have
meant, that while civil rights would have been guaranteed to women,
they would not have enjoyed equal rights in the private sphere. It was
above all the Social democrat, Elisabeth Selbert, who was responsible for
saving the issue of women’s equality. She succeeded in inserting the
equally simple but explicit sentence: “Men and women shall have equal
rights”. The Adenauer government, however, resisted breathing life into
this Article of the Basic Law. The necessary revisions to the civil code
were delayed. The Federal Constitutional Court repeatedly forced
reforms, as the entire Marriage and Family Law had become unconstitutional
since the passing of the Basic Law.
Before the Equal Rights Act fi nally came into effect in 1958, the life
situa tion of women was as follows: married women did not even have
the right to dispose of money they had earned themselves as they
wished. The husband had the right to terminate the job of his wife or
could force her to take up a job. Under a so-called Double Income Law,
married women civil servants could be dismissed from their jobs. In case
of a lack of consensus, men had the last word on all issues: whether their
child was to be named Hans or Franz, whether to move to a new area,
whether the children should attend grammar school (Gymnasium),
whether a washing machine should be purchased – the fi nal word on the
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