Equal Opportunities for Women in the Federal Republic of Germany: Institutional Developments

There can be no doubt that Equal Opportunities Policies now lay claim to a political respectability in many countries which was unheard of just a decade ago. In particular, progress has been made towards opening up the space within local, regional and national administrative and governmental bureaucracies in which the politics of gender, race, disability etc. may validly be articulated. In the case of women, that progress has frequently taken the form of the institutionalisation of equality issues, through the creation of separate and more or less independent bodies with a specific brief to further gender equality (United Nations, 1989).