Abstract
Varieties of Feminism is an insightful, thought-provoking, and rich analysis of German feminism. Based on more than 30 years of research, the book tells a compelling story of German feminist politics. Crucially, Myra Marx Ferree’s research speaks to an audience beyond Germany by putting her analysis of German feminism into dialogue with women’s movements in other countries, particularly the United States. Clearly structured and well written, the book is a pleasure to read.
Embedded in a detailed historical account of how feminism developed in Germany, Varieties of Feminism makes several key contributions to our understanding of feminist politics in Germany and beyond. First, the book documents the developments of feminism in East and West Germany, thereby detailing the particularities of, and differences between, East and West German feminism before, during, and after the reunification. Second, the book adopts an intersectional lens to trace how race, class, and gender intersections differ in significant ways in Germany and the United States. In particular, Myra Marx Ferree argues that political organization along class lines formed the institutional framework for gender politics in Germany. This, she argues, differs from the focus on the intersections between race and gender in the United States. Third, the book contrasts German feminism with women’s movements in more liberal countries, such as the United States, and thereby demonstrates how the politics of gender reflect core assumptions about the state, gendered citizenship, and individual rights.
Varieties of Feminism begins with an introductory chapter that outlines the underlying theoretical framework—relational realism—and contextualizes the German feminist movement. The seven chapters that follow span more than one century (1848 to the present moment) and explore concrete challenges that German feminists have faced with particular attention to opportunity structures, mobilizations, and the interplay between those.
Chapter two contrasts and compares the history of feminism in Germany and the United States (1848-1968) by focusing on the nature of class and race struggles in the two contexts. Examining the postwar reemergence of feminism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, chapter three focuses on the feminist movement’s self-definition as autonomous, both from the public gender order of the male breadwinner family in the West and the power of the Communist Party in the East. The fourth chapter explores the variety of women’s projects—such as shelters for battered women—that emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s in West Germany. By documenting the principles on which these projects operated, this chapter shows that they were more decisively separatist than comparable feminist initiatives in the United States. Chapter five examines the relationship between feminists and political institutions in the 1980s. While feminists in the East moved away from the state, West German feminists moderated their rejection of it by, for example, beginning to work in conventional party politics. Chapter six focuses on debates between East and West German feminists during and after the German reunification and demonstrates that diversity between women became the most contentious issue for feminists in this period. Chapter seven also takes up the issue of differences among women, but the focus shifts away from debates between West and East German women to the transnationalization of German politics. In particular, the chapter examines the influence of international actors, such as the European Union and the United Nations, on German feminist politics.
The final and eighth chapter considers particular changes of recent German gender politics, such as the election of Angela Merkel as first woman chancellor, to understand better the possibilities and constraints of the present moment. The chapter provides an insightful account of the transnational context for German gender politics by discussing various factors, such as neoliberal economic politics and the role of the War on Terror, in framing discussions and perceptions of feminist issues.
While I am deeply impressed by the depth and breadth of research that Varieties of Feminism is based on, I was surprised that this final chapter does not explicitly analyze some of the more recent debates about feminism in Germany. In 2007 and 2008, for example, several younger authors and even the politician Silvana Koch-Mehrin published books that endorsed a “new” feminism. Some of these books, such as Meredith Haaf et al.’s Wir Alpha-Mädchen sparked a lively media debate. Charlotte Roche’s widely discussed Wetlands even made it onto international bestseller lists. Interesting insights could have been gained if the new German feminisms—in all their diversity and contingency—had been put into dialogue with the book’s key arguments about autonomy, intersectionality, and the particularities of the German context. Judging by the important, well-researched, and original contributions that Varieties of Feminism makes, such an analysis would have added to the book’s detailed and insightful exploration of contemporary feminist politics in Germany.