Gender, Intersectionality, and the Executive Branch: The Case of Angela Merkel

Abstract

This introduction provides a theoretical framework for investigating the effect of gender on national-level executive branch leadership. Currently, there is no consensus as to what is expected of a woman who occupies her country's highest office. The article argues that this disagreement is due to the assumption of an idealised ‘woman leader’. Adopting an intersectional approach to studying gender and executive leadership, it is argued that it is possible neither to identify a single ‘female chief executive style’ nor to a priori identify a set of ‘female’ policy positions. Because gender norms differ within and across countries, we must determine ‘what kind’ of a female politician we are studying to determine how her particular gender might impact on her governance. The article then considers what might be expected of a German Bundeskanzlerin who is also a Protestant CDU member trained as a natural scientist and raised in the GDR.

Notes

Farida Jalalzai, ‘Women Shattering the Glass Ceiling’, Politics and Gender 4/2 (2008), pp.205–31.

World Bank, ‘Gross Domestic Product 2008’, available from http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf (accessed 7 Oct. 2009); Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, ‘The 15 Major Spender Countries 2007’, available from http://archives.sipri.org/contents/milap/milex/mex_trends.html (accessed 2008).

Ange-Merie Hancock, ‘When Multiplication Doesn't Equal Quick Addition: Examining Intersectionality as a Research Paradigm’, Perspectives on Politics 5/1 (2007), p.67.

Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Intersectionality and Feminist Politics’, European Journal of Women's Studies 13/3 (2006), p.195.

Scholars taking an intersectional approach often stress how particular combinations of social characteristics make some individuals even more disadvantaged than others (for example, pointing out that women of colour face more employment discrimination than either white women or minority men). Clearly national leaders cannot be considered disadvantaged individuals. However, by extending the intersectional approach in the other direction, we can show some of the advantages certain women enjoy, making them more likely to access positions of power. It is no coincidence that Germany's first Bundeskanzlerin was an ethnically-German woman rather than one of migrant descent.

Olga S. Opfell, Women Prime Ministers and Presidents (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1993); Laura A. Liswood, Women World Leaders: Fifteen Great Politicians Tell Their Stories (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1995); Alan Siaroff, ‘Women's Representation in Legislatures and Cabinets in Industrial Democracies’, International Political Science Review 21/2 (2000), pp.197–215; Maria Escobar-Lemmon and Michelle Taylor-Robinson, ‘Women Ministers in Latin American Government: When, Where, and Why?’, American Journal of Political Science 49/4 (2005), pp.829–44; Karen M. Hult, ‘Women as Executive Branch Leaders’ in Lori Cox Han and Carline Heldman (eds.), Rethinking Madam President: Are We Ready for a Woman in the White House? (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007), Jalalzai, ‘Women Shattering’.

Michael A. Genovese (ed.), Women as National Leaders (London: Sage, 1993).

Azza Karam and Joni Lovenduski, ‘Women in Parliament Making a Difference’, in Julie Ballington and Azza Karam (eds), Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers (Stockholm: IDEA, 2005), p.188.

Genovese, Women as National Leaders; Opfell, Women Prime Ministers; Liswood, Women World Leaders.

Siaroff, ‘Women's Representation’; Escobar-Lemmon and Taylor-Robinson, ‘Women Ministers’.

Examples in English include Myra Marx Ferree, ‘Angela Merkel: What Does it Mean to Run as a Woman?’, German Politics and Society 24/1 (2005), pp.93–107; Mark R. Thompson, and Ludmilla Lennartz, ‘The Making of Chancellor Merkel’, German Politics 15/1 (2006), pp.99–110; Angelika von Wahl, ‘Women and Political Representation in Germany: The Not-So Unlikely Rise of Angela Merkel’, Paper presented at the 30th Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, Pittsburgh, PA, 28 Sept.–1 Oct. 2006; Sarah E. Wiliarty, ‘Angela Merkel's Path to Power: The Role of Internal Party Dynamics and Leadership’, German Politics 17/1 (2008), pp.81–96.

Karrin Vasby Anderson and Kristina Horn Sheeler, Governing Codes: Gender, Metaphor, and Political Identity (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005); Robert P. Watson and Ann Gordon, Anticipating Madam President (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003); Lori Cox Hahn and Carline Heldman (eds.), Rethinking Madam President: Are We Ready for a Woman in the White House? (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007).

For example, in English, Holli A. Semetko and Hajo G. Boomgaarden, ‘Reporting Germany's 2005 Bundestag Campaign: Was Gender an Issue?’, Press/Politics 12/4 (2007), pp.154–71.

How a woman comes to power, or the fact that she faces a sexist press, may very well have consequences for how she governs, but these implications are not elaborated upon in this scholarship.

Hult, ‘Women as Executive Branch Leaders’, pp.150–51.

Lori Cox Han, ‘Presidential Leadership: Governance from a Woman's Perspective’, in Robert P. Watson and Ann Gordon (eds.), Anticipating Madam President (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003), p.170; see also Cindy Simon Rosenthal, ‘Determinants of Collaborative Leadership: Civic Engagement, Gender, or Institutional Norms?’, Political Research Quarterly 51/4 (1998), pp.847–68.

Han, ‘Presidential Leadership’, p.171; Karam and Lovenduski, ‘Women in Parliament’.

Karam and Lovenduski, ‘Women in Parliament’, pp.189–90.

Genovese, Women as National Leaders; Liswood, Women World Leaders.

Patricia Lee Sykes, ‘Women as National Leaders: Patterns and Prospects’, in Michael A. Genovese (ed.), Women as National Leaders (London: Sage, 1993), p.226.

For more on Kiesinger's leadership style see Baring 1969, cited in Jonathan Olsen's contribution to this collection, ‘Leadership in Grand Coalitions: Comparing Angela Merkel and Kurt Georg Kiesinger’, German Politics (2011), DOI: 10.1080/09644008.2011.606564; for more on Schroeder's leadership style see Claus Christian Malzahn, Spiegel-Online International, ‘The Modern Chancellor: Taking Stock of Gerhard Schroder’, available from http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,379600,00.html (accessed 14 Oct. 2005). Experts on the US Presidency have similarly found widely divergent leadership styles among the (to date all male) American presidents; see Fred I. Greenstein, The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Barack Obama (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009).

Karam and Lovenduski, ‘Women in Parliament’; Ferree, ‘Angela Merkel’, pp.94–5; Lena Wängnerud, ‘Sweden’, in Julie Ballington and Azza Karam (eds.), Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers (Stockholm: IDEA: 2005), p.241.

Ferree, ‘Angela Merkel’, pp.103–4; Joyce Marie Mushaben, ‘Deconstructing Gender in German Politics: The ‘Extreme Make-Over’ of Chancellor Angela Merkel', Paper presented to the 30th Annual Meeting of the German Studies Association, Pittsburgh, PA, 28. Sept.–1. Oct. 2006.

Karam and Lovenduski, ‘Women in Parliament’, p.207.

Ibid., pp.207–10.

Leslie A. Schwindt-Bayer, ‘Still Super-Madres? Gender and the Policy Priorities of Latin American Legislators’, American Journal of Political Science 50/3 (2006), pp.570–85.

Miki Caul Kittilson, ‘Representing Women: The Adoption of Parental Leave in Comparative Perspective’, Journal of Politics 70/2 (2008), pp.323–34.

Han, ‘Presidential Leadership’; Wängnerud, ‘Sweden’; Karam and Lovenduski, ‘Women in Parliament’, pp.202–3; Shiela Meintjes, ‘South Africa’, in Julie Ballington and Azza Karam (eds), Women in Parliament: Beyond Numbers (Stockholm: IDEA, 2005).

Genovese, Women as National Leaders, p.217; See also S. Laurel Weldon, ‘Intersectionality and Political Representation: Class, Gender, and Public Policy in the United States’, Paper presented at the First ECPR European Conference on Politics and Gender, 21–23 Jan. 2009.

Weldon, ‘Intersectionality and Political Representation’.

Miroslav Nincic and Donna J. Nincic, ‘Race, Gender, and War’, Journal of Peace Research 39/5 (2002), pp.547–68.

Rose McDermott, Dominic Johnson, Jonathan Cowden and Stephen Rosen, ‘Testosterone and Aggression in a Simulated Crisis Game’, The ANNALS of the American Society of Political and Social Science 614 (2007), pp.15–23; Stephen Peter Rosen, War on Human Nature (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004).

Francis Fukuyama, ‘Women and the Evolution of World Politics’, Foreign Affairs 77/5 (1998), p.27.

Mary Caprioli and Mark A. Boyer, ‘Gender, Violence, and International Crisis’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution 45/4 (2001), pp.503–18.

Tom Lansford, ‘A Female Leader for the Free World: The First Woman President and U.S. Foreign Policy’, in Robert P. Watson and Ann Gordon (eds.), Anticipating Madam President (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003), pp.177–88; Sykes, ‘Women as National Leaders’, pp. 219–29.

V. Spike Peterson and Anne Sission Runyan, Global Gender Power, 2nd edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999), pp.95–7; men, such as George H.W. Bush – deemed a ‘wimp’ – who do not conform to prevailing male gender norms will find themselves under similar pressures.

John Davis, ‘Confronting the Myths: The First Woman President and National Security’, in Robert P. Watson and Ann Gordon (eds), Anticipating Madam President (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003), pp.194–6.

Liswood, Women World Leaders, p.87; Lansford, ‘A Female Leader’.

bell hooks, Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1981). To trace the development of intersectional scholarship over time see Hancock, ‘When Multiplication’, and Naomi Zack, ‘Can Third Wave Feminism Be Inclusive? Intersectionality, Its Problems, and New Directions’, in Linda Martin Alcoff and Eva Feder Kittay (eds), The Blackwell Guide to Feminist Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007).

Kimberle Crenshaw, ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’, in Raquel Kennedy Bergen, Jeffrey L. Edleson and Claire M. Renzetti (eds), Violence Against Women: Classic Papers (Boston, MA: Pearson, 2005 [1989]).

James A. Hannaham, ‘Obama and the Rules for Angry Black Men’, Salon.com, 18 Sept. 2008.

Hence since its introduction into the study of American politics, the intersectional approach has been embraced by students of comparative politics; see S. Laurel Weldon, ‘The Structure of Intersectionality: A Comparative Politics of Gender’, Politics and Gender 2/2 (2006), pp.235–48.

Hancock, ‘When Multiplication’, p.67.

Nikol G. Alexander-Floyd, ‘Framing Condi(licious): Condoleezza Rice and the Storyline of ‘Closeness’ in U.S. National Community Formulation', Politics and Gender 4/3 (2008), pp.427–49.

At the experiential level social divisions will also shape how others view the appropriate way to interact with a leader. ‘[G]ender will have an effect on the leader's performance in office to the extent that others, both allies and adversaries, perceive it as salient and change their own behavior accordingly’ (Michael A. Genovese and Seth Thompson, ‘Women as Chief Executives’, in Genovese, Women as National Leaders, p.5). For example, one observer argued that Margaret Thatcher met with little opposition in her own cabinet because ‘in the minds of many ministers – educated in British public schools – Thatcher apparently evoked the image of the only other female authority figure they know: mother (and perhaps nanny)’ and they instinctively deferred to her (Sykes, ‘Women as National Leaders’, p.226).

Yuval-Davis, ‘Intersectionality and Feminist Politics’, p.198.

Ibid., p.203.

Because there was a high level of negative equality in the GDR, unparalleled in a capitalist country, it is difficult to assess the role that class played in Merkel's formative years. The available evidence suggests that her training as a physicist has more profoundly shaped her than her economic class.

Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, Rising Tide: Gender Equality and Cultural Change Around the World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Katrin Rohnstock, Stiefschwestern (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1994); Joyce Marie Mushaben, ‘Second-Class Citizenship and its Discontents: Women in United Germany’, in Peter Merkl (ed.), The Federal Republic of Germany at 45 (New York: New York University Press, 1995), pp.79–98; Heike Trappe and Rachel A. Rosenfeld, ‘A Comparison of Job-Shifting Patterns in the Former East Germany and the Former West Germany’, European Sociological Review 14/4 (1998), pp.343–68.

Angela Merkel and Hugo Müller-Vogg, Angela Merkel – Mein Weg: Ein Gespräch mit Hugo Müller-Vogg (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 2005), p.132.

Herlinde Koelbl, Spuren der Macht (München: Knesebek 2002), p.53.

Hajo Schumacher, Die Zwölf Gesetze der Macht. Angela Merkels Erfolgsgeheimnisse München: Heyne 2007; Evelyn Roll, Die Erste. Angela Merkels Weg zur Macht (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2005); Volker Resing, Angela Merkel. Die Protestantin – Ein Porträt (Leipzig: St. Benno-Verlag, 2009).

Cited in Mushaben, ‘Deconstructing Gender’, p.10.

Merkel and Müller-Vogg, Angela Merkel, p.51.

Cited in Mushaben, ‘Deconstructing Gender’, p.7.

Cited in Bernhard Mueller-Haerlin, ‘Angela Merkel's Foreign Policy’ Contemporary Review 289 (2007), p.2.

Wahl, ‘Women and Political Representation’; Sarah E. Wiliarty, Bringing Women to the Party: The CDU and the Politics of Gender in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, ‘Mitgliederzusammensetzung der CDU’, available from http://www1.bpb.de/themen/87FOCD,0,CDU_Mitgliederzusammensetzung.html (accessed 2009).

Given Merkel's background it is unlikely she would have done so in the first place, but much of the literature on women in the executive branch makes this assumption.

Mushaben, ‘Deconstructing Gender’.

Wiliarty, ‘Angela Merkel's’ Path to Power.

Koelbl, ‘Spuren der Macht’, pp.47 and 53.

Mushaben, ‘Deconstructing Gender’, pp.10–11.

Wiliarty, ‘Angela Merkel's’ Path to Power.

Thompson and Lennartz, ‘The Making’.

Susan Franceset, Mona Lena Krook and Jennifer M. Piscopo, ‘The Impact of Gender Quotas: A Research Agenda’, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Toronto, Canada, 3–6 Sept. 2009.

Susan J. Carroll, ‘Reflections on Gender and Hillary Clinton's Presidential Campaign: The Good, the Bad, and the Misogynic’, Politics and Gender 5/1 (2009), p.6. Merkel herself noted that it was ‘more fun’ to be Minister for the Environment rather than for Women's issues and that she felt ‘very competent’ in the former position. Koelbl, ‘Spuren der Macht’, p.54.

Wiliarty, ‘Angela Merkel's’; Clay Clemens, ‘From the Outside In: Angela Merkel as Opposition Leader: 2000–2005’, German Politics and Society 24/3 (2006), pp.41–81.

Wiliarty, ‘Angela Merkel's’ Path to Power.

Thompson and Lennartz, ‘The Making’.

Worldwide, many women who have moved into, or been nominated for, top executive-branch posts have ascended based on reputations as reformers and advocates of clean government after an era of corruption. Examples of such women include Megawati Sukarnoputri in Indonesia and Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia. Camilla Stivers, Gender Images in Public Administration: Legitimacy and the Administrative State, 2nd edition (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002).

Clay Clemens, ‘Party Management as a Leadership Resource: Kohl and the CDU/CSU’, German Politics. 7/1 (1998), pp.96 and 98–9.

Wiliarty, ‘Angela Merkel's’ Path to Power.

Many men coveted the leadership positions she assumed, were resentful of Merkel's rise, and tried unsuccessfully to undermine it; Gerd Langguth, Angela Merkel (Munich: DTV, 2005); Thompson and Lennartz, ‘The Making’, Mushaben, ‘Deconstructing Gender’. Although she lacked a solid western Land power base used by these so-called ‘State Princes’ to jump-start campaigns for higher office, Merkel detected a foreign policy vacuum following Kohl's exit and Stoiber's 2002 electoral defeat. She moved to shore up her post-9/11 hardliner credentials by openly defending the American invasion of Iraq, as conveyed in a speech to military and diplomatic leaders at the 2004 Munich Security Conference. Joyce Marie Mushaben, ‘Madam Chancellor: Angela Merkel and the Triangulation of German Foreign Policy’, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs 10/1 (2009), pp.27–35.

See, for example, the media treatment of Hillary Clinton discussed in Carroll, ‘Reflections on Gender’. Conversely, male leaders can also suffer from not living up to gendered expectations that men are ‘tough’ – see for example the media portrayal of George H.W. Bush as a ‘wimp’.

Koelbl, ‘Spuren der Macht’, p.51.

Thompson and Lennartz, ‘The Making’; Mushaben's ‘Madam Chancellor’ enumerates these rivals and how Merkel bested them.