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<\/p>\nGuten Tag! There has been uproar in German politics recently because a German mayor was not invited to a charity event \u2013 simply because she is a woman. This comes shortly after Germany celebrated 100 years of women having the vote.<\/p>\n
Karoline Linnert is the finance senator and substitute mayor for the city of Bremen. She was elected to fill in for Carsten Sieling, the city\u2019s primary mayor, who had to back out at the last minute to attend the funeral of the mayor of Gdansk In Poland. But despite being his official representative, Linnert did not get an invite to the annual Eiswette charity event, because it is traditionally for men only.<\/p>\n
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Die Bremer Eiswette<\/strong> (\u2018Bremen Ice Bet\u2019) is an annual event where people place bets on whether die Weser<\/strong> (River Weser) is frozen or not (\u2018ob sie geht oder steht\u2019<\/strong> – \u2018whether it moves or stands still\u2019). The money made at this charity event is donated to the maritime search and rescue service. This is a long-standing tradition in Bremen dating back to 1828 \u2013 but it\u2019s always been exclusively for men.<\/p>\n This is especially raw as Germany recently celebrated 100 years of women\u2019s voting rights (\u2018100 Jahre Frauenwahlrecht\u2019<\/strong>). German women gained the right to vote in 1919 (it wasn\u2019t until 1977, however, that women were allowed to get a job without their husband\u2019s permission).<\/p>\n And although the country has been led by Angela Merkel since 2005, the majority of German politicians are male.<\/p>\n Image via Pixabay<\/p><\/div>\n Language students often raise an eyebrow at the use of gender in the German language itself. One of the common questions people have about it is: What\u2019s with the three genders (articles) for nouns? Why is a chair \u2018male\u2019 (der Stuhl), a cat \u2018female\u2019 (die Katze) and a girl \u2018neuter\u2019 (das M\u00e4<\/span><\/strong>dchen)?<\/strong> And although the answer to this question is actually very innocent (answer: the genders\/articles have nothing to do with the nature of the noun they are describing), there are definitely some issues with the way male and female roles are separated in <\/span>the <\/span>German <\/span>language,<\/span> the way they aren\u2019t so much any more in English. <\/span>If you\u2019re interested, you can read more about this topic here!<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n I hope this has been interesting!<\/p>\n Bis bald!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Guten Tag! There has been uproar in German politics recently because a German mayor was not invited to a charity event \u2013 simply because she is a woman. This comes shortly after Germany celebrated 100 years of women having the vote. Karoline Linnert is the finance senator and substitute mayor for the city of Bremen…<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/german\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2019\/01\/beard-2365810_1280-1024x642.jpg\")
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