Varieties of Feminism: German Gender Politics in Global Perspective by Myra Marx Ferree (review)

Why, asks Myra Marx Ferree, do certain feminist goals seem attainable in one country but unachievable in another? In Germany, for example, paid leave for mothers is a long accepted principle of state policy that seems utopian in the United States. In the US, anti-discrimination policy in education and employment seems reasonable but in Germany, it looks radical. Marx Ferree addresses this question through a study of German feminism that places it in the dual framework of historical context and international comparison. It focuses on the decades after 1968, but includes a chapter on German feminism’s earlier history. It draws enlightening comparisons between the priorities of German feminism and Western, especially American, feminism.

Feminist theory and practice reflect, the author argues, the history, political culture, and material conditions of feminism’s national context. These factors shaped a German feminism whose dominant premises were “social justice, family values, and state responsibility for the common good” (2). Marx Ferree defines these principles as “non-liberal” in contrast to the individual-rights orientation of liberal Anglo-American feminism. German liberal feminism lost traction, Marx Ferree argues, as the politics of class conflict divided the women’s movement. Feminists across the political spectrum increasingly saw women as a group defined by reproduction and the family but disagreed about the implications of women’s family-centeredness. Radical feminists wanted to protect the rights of mothers and children; socialists emphasized social justice for the working-class nuclear family; conservatives venerated the hierarchical family. After 1945, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) promoted family values; paternal authority and state support dominated in West Germany. Social Democracy (SPD) rarely challenged this discourse and policy, Marx Ferree suggests, because the SPD too favored the male-breadwinner model. In East Germany (GDR), official rhetoric trumpeted support to mothers and children and women’s right to employment as gifts of the socialist republic to “our women.” Division on the “woman question” was now articulated in Cold-War terms rather than class language.

Germany’s class divide also shaped feminist theory, according to Marx Ferree. American feminists saw sex discrimination as analogous to race discrimination, a perspective that reinforced their commitment to individual equality. In contrast, German feminists saw class oppression as the relevant analogy and assumed that, like workers, women should join together in solidarity as women. Marx Ferree offers thin historical evidence in support of this intriguing claim. As she notes, the SPD, in fact, discouraged solidarity based on sex in favor of class solidarity. And before 1945, I would add, Communists were downright hostile to women’s organizational autonomy.

If not well-grounded historically, the “class analogy” argument illuminates salient characteristics of second-wave feminism in the 1970s and 1980s. German feminists were influenced by the consciousness-raising phase of American radical feminism and its rallying cries, “the personal is political” and “sisterhood is powerful.” They, however, focused on empowering motherhood, emphasized sexual difference, were strongly separatist and averse to working with political parties, and called for women’s solidarity in an autonomous movement for collective self-determination. In several excellent chapters, Marx Ferree analyzes radical feminism’s struggle for reproductive rights, commitment to the social value of women’s work in the home, and pursuit of organizational self-help through “projects,” including shelters for battered women, women-only houses, centers, and bookstores; and a call for paid housework. Not all feminists agreed with the celebration of difference and the definition of emancipation as a collective transformation of power relations. Most famously, Alice Schwarzer demanded equal treatment of individual women so they could make it in the world of employment and politics.

The heyday of feminist autonomy passed as feminists became more engaged with the state in the later 1980s. Women’s projects became “institutionalized” (98). To fund the shelters, centers, etc., activists applied for state grants. Local and state governments introduced the position of women’s advocate (Frauenbeauftragte) to...