Misogynist Reality – A Screaming Subtlety in the AfD’s and CDU’s election programmes
A Political Outlook for Germany in 2025
[This is not a classic OSINT piece, instead the research of this article is based on the election programme by the AfD (Alternative for Germany). Here, the article’s eye focuses on the AfD’s women’s policies – other grounds of discrimination must be considered as well, but just to be clear from the start: the AfD and also in most parts the CDU (Christian Democratic Party) talk about white German women. So, this article functions as a kick-off for reflecting on what to expect for all FLINTA*, BIPOC and all who are affected by other intersectional grounds of discrimination. One that is fluent in German could read the election programme oneself, but only if one likes to read between the lines. Because what kind of life and role the AfD envisions for women was no longer being propagated so openly and vocally in the run-up to the federal elections. At first glance, it seemed like the AfD was hiding their traditional housewifey dream behind more moderate words.]
The federal elections in Germany were held on February 23, 2025 and the outcome is clear: the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) with its ‘Rambo Zambo’ Friedrich Merz on top – who named the upcoming legislative period after this Rambo Zambo song – won 28.5% (208 seats), and the AfD with Elon Musk’s best friend Alice Weidel as head women won 20.8% (152 seats). German voters sent a loud and uncomfortable message: they seem d’accord with a right-wing oriented leadership. There is a gender theme in the voting behaviour. Interestingly, 27% of young men between 18 and 24 years voted for the AfD (women’s votes in comparison: 15%), while lots of women that age voted for the left party, DIE LINKE, with 35% (men’s votes in comparison: 16%) (Tagesschau, 2025). And even though the CDU now officially tries to find a common ground for a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD), their dehumanising, narrow-minded and quite racist approach to migration complicates the discussion at eye level. Recently, even Boris Pistorius (SPD), current Federal Minister of Defense said: “These [CDU] dialogue partners were by far the most unpleasant. Humanity and responsibility for other people? Zero point zero” (ZDF, 2025). The CDU today is not the CDU that Germans were dealing with during the Merkel-era; powerful men like Friedrich Merz enjoy kicking downwards or at least find some pleasure in the exclusion of women. The viral picture of Friedrich, Martin, Markus, Alexander, Thorsten and Carsten discussing Germany’s future symbolises the upcoming years in a nutshell: white old men with expensive suits having bad-breath coffee and eating from a (Brat)wurst plate. The only woman in the room, Dorothee Bär, was literally cut out of the picture since she had to take it.
source: instagram.com/markus.soeder
Just a few weeks before the elections, the so-called ‘fire-wall’ against the AfD (german: Brandmauer) dramatically fell under the heated and politicised debates surrounding migration as an alleged threat to Germany’s national security. The fire-wall is a term that symbolises the once unified stance by center-moderate German parties to not collaborate with the AfD. The AfD is categorised as a suspected right-wing extremist party by the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), the German intelligence service on federal level – and is confirmed to be right-wing extremist in three federal states. Just before the elections, Merz pushed through a motion on migration policy in the German Bundestag, which was only possible with the help of the AfD parliamentary group. This is the first time since the Third Reich that a right-wing party was utilized by centre parties to enforce their will and make political wide-range decisions. Merz now justifies this decision by saying: “A right decision does not become wrong because the wrong people agree with it. It remains right.” But you know what, Friedrich? A decision that requires votes from a racist, anti-Semitic, dehumanising, nationalist party – that is considered a threat to democracy – to pass, might be the wrong decision to begin with.
It is crucial, now more than ever, to look really closely at what now no longer appears to be as impossible as it long seemed to be during our comfortable Angie-era, snoring in granny’s lap: the rise of a right-wing extremist party that the CDU now normalises through their efforts of collaboration. Even if Merz, CDU and other CSU (Christian-Social Union in Bavaria) members like Markus Söder promised at their election party congress the following: “There is no cooperation, there is no tolerance, there is no minority government, nothing” or “No, no, no to any form of cooperation with the AfD” (tagesschau, 2025), one has to question whether we can trust these men, even more after the fall of the so-called ‘fire-wall’.
So what if we, especially as women, actually can’t trust them? What if the CDU tears the ‘fire-wall’ (whose existence can be highly questioned in the first place) down entirely and a so-called GroKo, Great Coalition of CDU and SPD, does not work out? Or a renewed GroKo will govern with still a horrendous high number of right-wing extremists aka AfD parliamentarians in the German Bundestag? Let’s have a closer look at the election programme of the AfD – a realistic outline of what all who identify as female in Germany might have to face.
Caution (bavarian: Obacht): the AfD’s Right-Wing Misogyny
The AfD once put all their misogynistic views in their groundlaying Policy Programme (2016). In their election programme of 2025 they now used new expressions that may sound harmless at first. Or at least it’s not like they scream their conservatism in your faces as they once did with their billboards showing a white Aryan-looking family that makes the >>Hitlergruß<< (rbb, 2024) – or a blond young pregnant woman lying on the grass with the catch-phrase: “‘New Germans?’ We make them ourselves.”, see here: Deutschlandfunk Kultur, 2024. Another election slogan, recently published by the AfD on Instagram, shows the words: “Our Children First!”, underneath a blond young mother with cold blue eyes and her blond curly-haired youngster flashing into the camera like an innocent saint.
source: instagram.com/afd.bund ‘Our Children First!’
Rather, the AfD now chose a more subtle but very harmful way of writing about women and the family. The word “family” occurs 74 times in the election programme, the word “mother” and “women” respectively 5 times. The agenda setting is clear. While the AfD does not repeat its conception of the traditional family concept and does not clearly restate the role of the woman as the (house)wife in their election programme, they write: “The family is the nucleus [German: Keimzelle] of our society.” The term “Keimzelle” is Nazi vocabulary – the Nazi policy on women was first and foremost a family and childbirth policy. Now, does that ring a bell? As the ‘nucleus of the national community’, the family was under the special protection of the Nazi state (bpb, 2012).
Women policies were solely anchored in family policies in Nazi-era vocabulary – so, it’s crucial to examine what the AfD as an extremist right-wing party has in mind for families aka women today: “Children represent both a constantly changing future and the passing on of their own culture, traditions and the skills of their people [German: Volk]. Through an activating family policy, the AfD is striving for an increase in birth rates and thus a demographic turnaround in Germany, which not only ensures the individual happiness of parents, but also the passing on of our culture and stabilises the social systems”. So, let’s dismantle this step by step.
(De)activating Women – oh Wait, Family Policies
The AfD writes: “Ideally, families should be able to live on one salary and not be dependent on a double occupation, so they do not have to work two jobs”. This sounds nice, doesn’t it? And since the AfD denies the Gender Pay Gap there shouldn’t be a problem, right…? Well, in fact, women in Germany are currently paid 18 percent less than men, and even after adjustments and under the same conditions women would potentially be paid less than men. So, if a family is to live on one wage, it is very likely to be the man's.
This actually neatly goes hand in hand with the AfD’s traditional image of the family. In 2021, the AfD gave an explanation of their understanding of a family following a request by the Lesbian and Gay Association Germany: “The traditional family consisting of a father, mother and, if possible, several children is the model of our family policy. What is trivialised as a rainbow family or patchwork family – actually a patchwork family – is in reality often nothing more than the result of a failed attempt to build a normal family” (FR, 2024).
Moreover, the AfD points out that “mothers only count in the ‘woke’ society if they are in gainful employment and place their children in full-day state childcare, preferably from an early age”. First of all, this is just humbug – or in other words, nonsense. The AfD refers to a “misconceived form of feminism that favours women in the workforce, but not women who are ‘only’ mothers and housewives”. This isn’t a surprise since famous AfD politicians like Maximilian Krah, member of the European parliament, calls all feminists “ugly and hideous” (phoenix, 2024).
Secondly, the AfD promises in their programme a childcare salary up to the child's third birthday where parents should have real freedom of choice between external and self-care – in theory, this sounds tempting. They further write that the childcare salary for parents or grandparents should roughly correspond to the average net salary before the birth of the first child. But keep in mind the Gender Pay Gap: the reality is that women would then have to stay home while relying on their one and only husband’s wage. Or the alternative would be that grandparents play a bigger role in raising their grandkids: but let’s be honest here. This idea mostly manifests when you live in the rural area with your grandparents next door. Not when you live in the city and your grandparents 500 km away. Oh wait, is that what the AfD wants to revive? A traditional stay-at-home family where only the father leaves in the morning to go to work? That’s a rhetorical question, but of course that is the intention.
Last but not least, the AfD again proposes its traditional demand for family income splitting rather than marital income splitting – marital income splitting refers to the procedure by which married couples and civil partnerships are taxed in Germany; the AfD proposes that the tax to be paid is divided by all family members, which should particularly benefit families with many children. In reality, this model does not correspond to the reality of most families, but would be particularly profitable for single-earner households – regardless of the number of children – in which one parent does not work or only works part-time. Consequently, it would primarily benefit higher-earning and high-income families, for whom the splitting advantage exceeds the relief effects of child benefit and child allowance. The model is once again designed in such a way that it puts women at a disadvantage in terms of gender policy: since it is predominantly women who fulfil the role of the additional earner (lpb, 2025).
Mimic the US: Banning Abortions as Solution for Higher Birth Rates. Welcome to What Felt Like the Middle Ages, or: Back to the Future?
Well, the AfD wants to increase the birth rate by banning abortions. They make it sound like getting an abortion is the easiest thing for women, both emotionally as well as institutionally. They write: “The high number of abortions shows that these have become the norm for many people over the years. In many cases, pressure is exerted on mothers from outside. Fear for the future, fear of responsibility and the worry that a child or another child could overburden the partnership prompt many women to take this serious step.”
Let us be clear here. Getting an abortion up to 12 weeks in Germany is considered a criminal offence, yet with no prosecution (§ 218 Strafgesetzbuch (StGB)). Current numbers show that around 26,000 abortions were reported in Germany in the 3rd quarter of 2024 which is actually 2.6% fewer abortions than in the same quarter of the previous year. So, that can hardly be called the ‘norm’.
Furthermore, pregnancy counselling in Germany is obligatory before getting an abortion but it must be neutral. The AfD now writes in their election programme: “During pregnancy conflict counselling, the mothers should be shown ultrasound images of the child so that they are aware of the child's stage of development.” This is utilised by anti-abortion and pro-life movements in the US and is literally an influence and the attempt to compel women into feeling even worse about their potential decision.
The AfD also “wants to help single parents. However, it is against any financial support for organisations that propagate ‘single-parent families’ as a normal, progressive or even desirable lifestyle”. I have no idea what organisations they mean actually – this is just idiotic babble. But let’s look at the numbers. There were around 12 million families in Germany in 2023, and 2.97 million single parents which are about 25 percent (statista, 2024). Right after mentioning the support of single parents, the AfD refers to strengthening the fathers who wish to have a better relationship with their children. This is interesting since 8 out of 10 single parents are women (Neumeier, 2025); but the focus is – surprise – on men. Maybe this has to do with the fact that 80 % of AfD members are male (ibd.); and maybe even angry, divorced and slightly depressed men. This is of course just a hypothetical reflection.
AfD: Promoting a “De-Feminisation” of the Education Sector
Another important factor in women’s policy is education. While the AfD wants to abolish Bachelor and Master degree programmes, return to diplomas and cancel quotas in universities, the main factor is that they aim to convert compulsory schooling into compulsory education. This would enable home schooling, or rather home ideologization and radicalisation. This also goes hand in hand with the AfD’s boggling demand of the abolishment of the “Islamisation of German schools”.
Regarding the education of women and girls, the AfD follows a male-centred angle. Just in December 2024, they argued that “schools are no longer able to fulfil the demand for an education and upbringing that is appropriate for young boys” (Bundestag, 2024). In their own words, this is supposed to be the result of an increasing so-called ‘feminisation’ of the education sector, which has manifested itself through a strong surplus of female teaching staff.
Additionally, the alleged permanent degradation of boys in the German education system can no longer be ignored, says the AfD. So instead of ensuring education for all across the dimensions of gender, income and background, the AfD pursues home education only for the young German boys that are educated by their stay-at-home mothers how to be a ‘real and strong’ German boy, alias a nationalist protectionist. This is spooky.
Fighting Violence Against Women? Rather, Endorsing It.
Looking at the recently published ‘new situation of gender-based crimes against womenin Germany’, one should also ask what the AfD has in mind to fight violence against women. In 2023, 256.276 victims of domestic violence were recorded. That is 6.5 percent more than in the previous year. It’s also clear that the violence predominantly affects women: 70.5 percent of victims of domestic violence are female, while the perpetrators were mostly men (75.6 percent).
Last year, not one of the AfD-members in the European Parliament voted in favour of combating violence against women. In their election programme there is not one mention of the existence of violence against women. If they mention violence or rape, it’s only in combination with migration and refugees. The numbers tell us a different, and horribly so very true story: Two thirds of the cases in Germany fall into the area of intimate partner violence, while the remaining third relate to violence within the family against children, parents or other relatives. When voting for the AfD, people vote against the protection of women, of their wives and girlfriends, of their daughters.
What Has Friedrich and His CDU To Do with This?
Apart from the patriarchal picture shown above – which already says a lot about the inclusion of women, FLINTA* and BIPOC people in decision-making – it is highly relevant to connect the AfD suggestions in women’s policies to the CDU election programme. To eventually examine the commonality of the AfD’s approaches and the CDU visions. Overall, the CDU mentions women specifically 14 times in their election programme. They talk about the women’s right of self-determination, however only in the same breath as the right to family planning – which is actually mentioned 44 times: Again, the agenda setting is clear and similar to the AfD’s outline. Further, although innovative business ideas by women are promoted by the CDU, women and girls are generally mentioned in the context of the protection of women against violence, family planning and financial spousal splitting. It seems like in Friedrich’s CDU women are seen a bit like the vulnerable side-characters of this story that need male heroic protection. His CDU envisions women as childbearing creatures, who are lovingly serving their male masters – though, at least with some level of self-determination. Appreciated!
German Voters Know: the Delay Effect of European Right-Wing Extremism is No Excuse!
The current polarisation within our societies is scary. Instead of writing a human-centered agenda for a better, prosperous and green future, the year 2025 seems to open an era of regression: if we do not act against it, history might actually repeat itself. So, let’s take the words of the AfD seriously. Let’s remember German history but also get your noses out of the history books for a change: it’s happening again in Western democracies – in Europe, the US. People always love looking for a scapegoat for their own misery. The current political climate, again, turns against ‘the Other’. This xenophobia goes hand in hand with a deep-rooted sexism and regressive family policies. More than half of the German population will have to carry the consequences if Merz sympathises with his own radical anti-feminist election programme and matches these ideas with the Nazi-vocabulary by the AfD. Persons who identify as female and persons affected by further intersectional grounds of discrimination will once again be degraded to the doormat of the patriarchy. In the Christian mindset of the CDU, let’s end with the famous Biblical quote: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do – or else, as some would prefer the German translation of Rebel Without A Cause (1955): ...denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun. Well, it is hard to argue that German voters did not know what they were voting for. They knew and they still know.