BERLIN, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) emphasized during a festive speech on Monday that gender inequalities remain a significant issue in her country exactly one hundred years after women first gained the vote.
"A single swallow does not yet make a summer. The fact that I exist cannot be an alibi", Merkel told the audience at the German Historical Museum to convey with a metaphor that her successful career as a female policymaker was the exemption rather than the rule.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader, who recently announced that she will step down from the post after 18 years in December, drew attention to the fact that women were still woefully underrepresented in German politics. In the federal parliament (Bundestag), female delegates currently only accounted for 30 percent of the total.
In the "grand coalition" agreement signed by the CDU, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and German Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel's fourth governing cabinet set itself a goal of "equal representation of men and women in the leading positions of federal governance" to be achieved by 2025 at the latest. According to official figures, however, the actual share of women occupying senior policy positions in Germany's acting federal government has barely improved compared to the previous legislative period.
Aside from apparent gender inequalities in political leadership, Merkel further criticized Monday that German companies also lagged far behind those in many other countries when it came to employing women in senior positions. She cited statistics that 16.7 percent of large companies had a female executive on their boards in the eurozone's biggest economy, compared to 90 percent in the United States, and around 50 percent in Britain and France.
The chancellor noted that even the introduction of gender quotas had failed to alleviate the situation and would hence not suffice on its own. "Quotas were important. But the goal must be parity, parity everywhere", she said.
Merkel argued that the only sustainable society was one built on justice which entailed the equality of opportunity for men and women to choose their roles therein regardless of gender stereotypes. "I hope we do not have to wait a further one hundred years for this to materialize", the veteran stateswoman said.
