Women’s Underrepresentation in German Politics—Reforms and Reform Needs Based on the Local Level

This paper critically analyses German politics from the perspective of women's representation and participation at all levels of government, relying on secondary sources such as journal articles. It finds that representation of women in German politics has stagnated for decades, mainly due to the personalised proportional representation system and inconsistent, often weakly binding, voluntary party quotas, with underrepresentation at the top of government even more pronounced than in parliaments after Angela Merkel's resignation.

At municipal level, the proportion of women in mayoral offices in Germany stagnates at 10%, largely because larger parties have few women candidates and mostly male incumbents are usually re-elected.

The paper argues that institutional solutions such as term limits in mayoral elections and cumulation-and-splitting (open list election) combined with legal quotas for female candidates in parliamentary elections at all federal levels would be needed to significantly increase women's descriptive representation.