The West German Women's Movement

Abstract

As opposed to the American women's movement, which had at least two origins organizations such as NOW and those groups which broke away from SDS and other New Left or civil rights' coalitions -, German feminism evolved directly from the student movement at a time when it was becoming increasingly socialist. This development, described by Hilke Schlaeger in the following article, plus the dominant position of Marxism within progressive movements in Europe, combine to account for the greater significance of socialist theory in the writings of the German women's movement. The Prokop essay printed here is evidence of this materialist orientation and the new, exciting forms it is taking in the German feminist movement. Schlaeger points out very convincingly that this theoretical commitment has not yet produced a corresponding level of practical political work nor led to the types of alliances we would expect. However, the term she uses to describe this phenomenon depoliticization would seem strange to many Marxist feminists in this country. We would be ecstatic to be involved in such sophisticated theoretical efforts or even to rally the same type of women's support for the traditional socialist May Day demonstration. We have never been as versed in Marxism as German feminists, but we also have never severed our practical ties to the left as completely as German women seem to have done. In a country as heterogeneous as ours where progressive groups have been formed by such diverse elements as women, Blacks, Native Americans, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Asian Americans, Gay Liberationists, Senior Citizens and all sorts of leftists it is clear that we are powerless without alliances. Not so in West Germany, where both the left and the women's movement are student-based middle class groupings, and where the reactions of the male leaders of the left to feminism were even more violent than in the U. S. Narrow interpretation of class struggle shunted German women and their concerns for liberation into the category of secondary contradiction, a designation which has driven a wedge between the two movements not to be forgotten easily. Another major difference created by the historical development of the German feminism is that it lacks anything like our reformist or bourgeois women's movement. In the United States NOW, WEAL, CLUW and the Women's League for Peace and Freedom have provided impetus for changing laws and institutions within American society as it exists, while more