Democratic_Women's_Federation_of_Germany

Democratic Women's League of Germany

Democratic Women's League of Germany

Mass women's organisation in East Germany

The Democratic Women's League of Germany[1][2][3] (German: Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands, or DFD) was the mass women's organisation in East Germany. It was one of the constituent members of the National Front and sent representatives to the Volkskammer. In 1988, membership was 1.5 million.[4][1]

Quick Facts Formation, Dissolved ...

The DFD did not have much independence from the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED). Käte Selbmann, a member of the DFD's executive board, complained that it was "a pre-school for women, neither as central as the FDGB nor even more important than any other mass organization to women's work, and absolutely subordinate to the SED",[5] while historian Valerie Dubslaff writes that "the role of the department was therefore neither to represent the interests of women nor to promote them within the party, but to execute the political will of its leaders".[6]

Organization

Representatives at the 12th DFD Congress in East Berlin, 1987

The DFD was established in March 1947 and had the following official aims:

  • Removal of fascist ideas
  • Education for women
  • Equal rights
  • Fair social living conditions
  • Education of children in the spirit of humanism and peace
  • Co-operation with the international women's movement

Chairwomen of the Democratic Women's Federation of Germany

More information Name, Entered Office ...

References

  1. [1]
    Shreir, Sally, ed. (1988). Women's Movements of the World : an international directory and reference guide. Longman Group UK. pp. 99–100. ISBN 978-0-89774-508-6.
  2. [2]
    Guenther, Katja (2010). Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany. Stanford: Stanford University Press. p. 31. ISBN 978-0-8047-7072-9. The official women's group of the SED, the Democratic Women's League of Germany dominated women's organizational efforts in the GDR [...]
  3. [3]
    McCauley, Martin (1983). The German Democratic Republic since 1945. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 38. ISBN 978-1-349-18403-3. [...] the Democratic Women's Association of Germany (DFD) was founded in March 1947.
  4. [4]
    Dirk Jurich, Staatssozialismus und gesellschaftliche Differenzierung: eine empirische Studie, p.32. LIT Verlag Münster, 2006, ISBN 3825898938
  5. [5]
    Harsch, Donna (2000). "Approach/Avoidance: Communists and Women in East Germany, 1945–9". Social History. 25 (2): 176–178, 180. doi:10.1080/030710200363186. ISSN 0307-1022. JSTOR 4286643.
  6. [6]
    Dubslaff, Valérie (2014). "Les femmes en quête de pouvoir ? Le défi de la participation politique en République démocratique allemande (1949-1990)" [Women in Search of Power? The Challenge of Political Participation in the German Democratic Republic (1949-1990)]. Allemagne d'aujourd'hui (in French). 207 (1): 37. doi:10.3917/all.207.0033. ISBN 9782757406915 – via Cairn.info.
Stub icon

This article about an organisation based in Germany is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Democratic_Women's_Federation_of_Germany, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.