Strong women shape society

100 years ago, on 19 January 1919, women in Germany were allowed to vote for the first time and stand as candidates for the Reichstag. Around 300 women stood for election and the voter turnout among women was 82%.

The word were allowed almost gets stuck in my keyboard. It should actually be a matter of course that women and men work together to shape the country and the world in which they live. Unfortunately, this has not been the case for many centuries and is not always the case everywhere today.

Committed women

In many areas, such as science, literature and, of course, politics, women have had to work hard - sometimes with the support of men - to ensure that they have a say beyond the family sphere were allowed.

Men and women have equal rights. This sentence was only enshrined in our Basic Law when some women, under the leadership of Dr Elisabeth Selbert were intensively involved and collected 250,ooo signatures. Phew. How grateful I am that they did that.

Emancipation progressed like a snail on black ice, Willy Brandt once said. It's slow, but progress is being made.

Women as role models

Marie Curie, Sophie Scholl, Margarete Steiff, Suu Kyi, Astrid Lindgren and other courageous and inspiring women in the Impulse booklet series Strong women' a small monument.

We want to honour their achievements and at the same time encourage people to take inspiration from them for their own actions.

The church and women

As a devout Christian woman, I unfortunately have to admit that the church has also done its part to exclude women from social participation. Yet God has said from the beginning that man and woman should cultivate, care for and be responsible for the earth together.

In Proverbs 31, a woman who is also an entrepreneur alongside her family is portrayed as a role model of whom the whole family is proud. The New Testament also mentions women in spiritual co-responsibility - for example in the letter to the Romans.

Some with special responsibilities, such as Juniawho is mentioned as an apostle, became in later Bible translations Junias because a man in this office was easier for later, conservative generations to swallow than a woman. I have Strong women. Liberating biblical truths to bring some clarity to the subject.

Women and change

Old ideas die hard. Nelson Mandela, who campaigned for decades for political equality for black people, once recounted how he felt when he himself sat in an aeroplane piloted by a black pilot for the first time.

He had been told for so long that black people were less clever, gifted and talented than white people that even he, the activist for equality, had the thought running through his head: "Can he even do that?"

Can women even do that? For centuries, women were also denied certain abilities and characteristics because of their gender and were often denied the chance to show that they could.

I also regularly experience people asking me in amazement: "As a woman, you do that?" This can mean running a publishing house, building a ship, living alone on the Spree or simply being happy.

I like the Development opportunities for women close to my heart. I hope that a time will come when we will help to ensure that people who have the necessary skills for a task will do it as a matter of course - regardless of whether they are men or women. Just as God intended from the beginning.

How do you experience the topic yourself as a man or woman? I look forward to your comments and also to you sharing the article if you liked it.