Germany’s parliament is more female than it was

disgusting, but a political woman is appalling…In history there are no more cruel phenomena than political women,” wrote Richard Wagner to Franz Liszt, his fellow composer, about Ortrud, the sorceress in his opera “Lohengrin”. Wagner was a misogynist and an anti-Semite as well as a musical genius, but he was not alone in his dislike of political women. Well into the 20th century, many Germans thought women should concern themselves only with “” (children, kitchen, church).Much has changed. Angela Merkel, Germany’s first female chancellor, came to power in 2005 and stayed for 16 years. Yet German politics remains male-dominated (and the top echelons of business even more so). The proportion of members of the Bundestag (parliament) who are women has hovered at around a third for the past 24 years, though there are large discrepancies between the parties. More than half of Greens, for instance, are female; only 10% of the hard-right f’s are.