At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is easy to take for granted a “natural” affinity between women and parties of the left. Particularly from an American perspective, the long-standing partnership between the (mainstream) feminist movement and the Democratic Party substantiates this relationship. Yet in most western democracies, including the United States, from the time women were granted suffrage until at least the 1970s, the “natural” affinity was between women and parties of the right (Duverger 1955; Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes 1960; Lipset 1960; Butler and Stokes 1974). Inglehart and Norris call this voting difference the “traditional gender gap” (Inglehart and Norris 2003).

Germany was no exception to this trend. Once women in Germany gained the vote in 1919, they tended to support conservative parties, especially if those parties were religious in orientation (Molitor 1992: 24; Bremme 1956: 71). During the Weimar Republic, women voted for the Center Party and the German National People's Party. In the first decades after World War II, women were more likely than men to support Christian Democratic parties (Molitor 1992: 25).

Women were more likely to vote for conservative parties in general (and the CDU in particular) for a variety of reasons. Women tend to live longer and older people are often more conservative; women also tend to be more religious; women were less likely to be employed outside the home and housewives were particularly likely to be conservative (Bremme 1956; Lipset 1960; Molitor 1992: 33–6; Inglehart and Norris 2003: 77).

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of change in German politics. New social movements, including the women's movement, entered the political arena. The influence of these changes on the SPD has been noted frequently, particularly as the SPD struggled to come to terms with the Green Party. However, the CDU was also affected by the advent of New Left politics, including the women's movement.

One of the most important effects of the politics of the late 1960s on the CDU was the rise of the Women's Union. This internal organization had been present since the party's founding, but had served primarily as a social organization. The advent of the women's movement helped politicize the Women's Union. Christian Democratic women did not adopt the positions of the women's movement. Rather the women's movement provided the opportunity for the Women's Union to begin to advocate for its own positions on women's issues within the CDU.

The rise of the women's movement coincided with some important changes within the CDU. Helga Wex, a new energetic leader, became chair of the Women's Union in 1971. Turmoil within the CDU and a dramatic increase in female membership both presented an opportunity for the Women's Union to become much more prominent within the party.

The Women's Union's influence on the CDU is apparent in a new work-family policy, child-raising money, which advocated paying mothers who remained home to raise their children.

In September 1998, the Christian Democratic–Liberal coalition that had governed Germany for sixteen years was defeated in national elections. While the CDU itself was reluctant to acknowledge the problem, a primary reason behind this defeat was that the Christian Democrats lost the support of female voters, especially older women who had formed the party's most loyal support group (Molitor and Neu 1999). Certainly, many other factors contributed to the removal of the Christian Democrats from office: weariness with Helmut Kohl, a stalled economy with high unemployment, and the desire for something new. But if the CDU had managed to maintain its earlier levels of female support, Kohl and the Christian Democrats might have pulled out yet another victory.

In the 1998 Bundestag elections, the CDU/CSU's advantage with female voters effectively vanished. The Christian Democrats received only 0.1 percent more votes from women than from men. This was the smallest women's bonus ever, with the exception of 1980. The 1998 elections also marked the first time in the history of the Federal Republic that the majority of women ages 45 to 59 voted for parties of the left, rather than parties of the right (Molitor and Neu 1999: 257). However, the situation was even worse in 2002 when the CDU again polled worse with women than with men. When the party recovered some of this ground among women in 2005, it was able to reenter government.

The summer of 2005 was an exciting one in German politics. On May 22, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) suffered a serious defeat in its electoral heartland, North Rhine-Westfalia, which led Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to call for surprise early elections in the fall. The Christian Democrats chose to run Angela Merkel, chair of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), as their candidate. After starting the summer with a 25 percent point lead, Merkel lost ground throughout the campaign. From her controversial choice of Paul Kirchhof as future Finance Minister to her poor performance in the televised debate, it seemed Merkel could do nothing right. On September 18, the Christian Democrats received 35.2 percent of the vote and the Social Democrats received 34.2 percent. Neither major party had sufficient votes to form a government with its preferred coalition partner. After two months of wrangling, Merkel finally emerged as the leader of a grand coalition made up of the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats.

Merkel may have seemed like an odd choice for the Christian Democrats. After all, the CDU is a traditionally Catholic party and she is a Protestant. The CDU has traditional social values, yet it elected a woman. The CDU has struggled to gain votes in the former East Germany and has often seemed ineffective when campaigning there, yet the party elected the first eastern Chancellor. How did this conservative party come to make such an unusual choice for the most important position in the country?