Vol. 20 · No. 1 · Issue 62 · Spring 2002 · pp. 68-91 (24)

Pamela Fisher

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Abstract

This article will examine feminist debates within the PDS; I shall suggest that the party's predominating "feminism of difference"— which equates women's interests with "nature" and, by association, with concerns for peace and ecology—has been created and promoted by the essentially masculine culture of GDR Marxism-Leninism. While essentialist positions on gender are open to the charge of conservatism, I shall contend here that in the GDR these "feminine" values were not a consequence of political passivity but were pivotal in an emancipatory struggle against a patriarchal system. Therefore, the ostensibly conservative gender positions adopted by many PDS women should not be simply attributed to a lack of feminist consciousness, but rather should be understood as the result of a particular, complex historical context, in which "feminine values" offered an alternative to the failure of former ideological certainties. The views of the women interviewed for this study can only be properly understood in the light of these factors.