This chapter introduces the double relationship between gender equality and public policy that will be developed in the book: on one side how policies promote women’s equality and on the other the effect of women on making policy.

This chapter presents data and facts that provide a scenario of gender gaps along the three main dimensions of education, the labour market and politics and the main trends across countries and over time. It also explains the main determinants of gender gaps in the labour market.

This chapter considers three major global challenges and explains how they interact with gender equality and public policy - demographic, socioeconomic and technological changes. Demographic challenges such as the ageing of the population and migration flows will continue to increase in Europe. The increasing presence of women in the labour market interacts with this global demographic change, because more women at work may influence fertility rates. Similarly, migration flows may mitigate the consequences of the ageing process. At the same time, there is a constant process of socioeconomic changes: the old European continent must face the challenge of modest economic growth and increasing inequality. More women at work may be a way to increase economic output, a crucial outcome in times of slow economic growth. A major challenge is how to promote growth sustainably. Technological changes also have the potential to transform the global employment landscape. A gender divide emerges: by making possible new forms of job organization, such as remote working, the digital revolution can create more work for women and enhance women’s empowerment. On the other hand, it may represent a barrier for women who are less involved in STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) educational disciplines and who therefore risk being less involved than men as primary actors in these transformations.

This chapter presents evidence on individual psychological attributes and preferences of men and women which combine to identify the female ‘style of leadership‘. It then focuses on women as decision-makers in business positions and presents empirical analysis to test some of the predictions of the impact of female leadership on firms’ outcomes using rigorous identification strategies. The empirical analysis is organized by outcome: firms’ business performance, firms’ social and sustainability performance, firms’ international performance (export and trade) and labour market outcomes. Cross-country analysis with fixed effects as well as more detailed country analyses for two selected countries, Norway and Italy, are provided.

Chapter 14 explores the reverberations of Hugenberg’s election and the realignment of political forces that it set in motion. It begins with a discussion of the situation in the DVP, where Stresemann found himself forced on the defensive by the increased assertiveness of the industrial interests on the party’s right bring and where the Stahlhelm’s “hate declaration” against the Weimar Republic led to a rupture of its relationship with the DVP. The chapter then switches to the Center, where an effort to block Stegerwald’s election to the party chairmanship led to the installation of prelate Ludwig Kaas as the new party chairman in a development widely interpreted as a swing to the right on the part of the Center. It also focuses on Hugenberg’s efforts to consolidate power over the DNVP party organization and to curtail the autonomy of the DNVP Reichstag delegation under Westarp. Hugenberg’s determination to transform the DNVP into an instrument of his own political agenda not only placed a strain on his relations with the leaders of the German agricultural community but triggered a bitter conflict with the DNVP’s Reich Catholic Committee over the Concordat the Prussian government had signed with the Vatican.

Chapter 18 discusses the fateful elections of 14 September 1930 from the perspective of the German Right and the various factions on the Right that were vying for power. It focuses first of all on the efforts of the young conservatives who reorganized themselves into the Conservative People’s Party in the hopes of uniting those who had left the DNVP into a single political front. But these efforts, which enjoyed strong support from Paul Reusch and the German industrial establishment, evoked little interest from the leaders of the CNBLP and CSVD, both of whom were determined not to compromise the uniqueness of their own political appeal by entering into close ties with other political parties. In the meantime, Hugenberg and the DNVP leadership tried to organize their campaign around the mantra of anti-Marxism but misread, as did most of the other parties in the middle and moderate Right, the threat that National Socialism posed to their party’s electoral prospects. As a result, the Nazis were able to capitalize upon the disunity of the non-Nazi Right to score a victory of epic proportions that gave the NSDAP fourteen percent of the popular vote and 107 Reichstag mandates.

Chapter 15 covers the period from the fall of 1928 to the summer of 1929 with particular emphasis on the resurgence of the radical Right and the quest for right-wing unity culminating in the campaign against the Young Plan. What this reveals is a heated conflict between the DNVP and Stahlhelm for the leadership of the “national opposition” that was resolved only when the latter agreed to postpone its plans for a referendum to revise the Weimar Constitution so that Hugenberg could proceed with his own plans for a referendum against the Young Plan. But Hugenberg’s efforts to unify the German Right behind his crusade against the Young Plan ran into strong opposition from right-wing moderates who denounced a provision in the so-called “Freedom Law” that threatened government officials, including Hindenburg, who were responsible for negotiating the plan with imprisonment. Hugenberg’s refusal to drop the imprisonment paragraph reflected his determination to retain the support of Hitler and the NSDAP at the risk of alienating the RLB and more moderate elements in the referendum alliance. In the final analysis, the campaign against the Young Plan did not strengthen right-wing unity but only revealed how elusive that unity was.

Chapter 13 examines the period from the campaign for the May 1928 Reichstag elections to Alfred Hugenberg’s election as DNVP party chairman in October 1928. The DNVP went down to stunning defeat in the May elections that stemmed in large part from the success of middle-class and agrarian splinter parties to cannibalize the Nationalist electorate. The defeat was followed by a bitter internal crisis in which Westarp found himself such heavy attack from Hugenberg that he resigned his seat as DNVP party chairman. This was followed by a bitter fight for the DNVP party chairmanship that found Hugenberg’s opponents so badly organized that they were unable to block his election as Westarp’s successor in October 1928. Hugenberg’s election to the DNVP chairmanship represented a critical turning point in the history of the Weimar Republic and signaled the complete collapse of Stresemann’s efforts to stabilize Germany’s republican system of government from the Right.

Chapter 10 deals with the resurgence of nationalism on Germany’s patriotic Right in the second half of the 1920s. In many respects, this can be seen as a reaction against the increasingly prominent role that organized interests had played in Germany’s economic and political stabilization in the aftermath of Hitler’s ill-fated Beer Hall putsch. This chapter examines efforts on the part of the Ring Circle to foster a greater sense of unity within the ranks of the German Right as well as developments in the Stahlhelm, its increasing alienation from the Young German Order, and renewed activism on the part of the VVVD. All of this draws to a climax in the struggle against the Locarno Pact that Stresemann negotiated with the French, British, and Belgian governments in the spring and summer of 1925. At the epicenter of this struggle is the DNVP, which as a member of Chapter 11 covers the period from the DNVP’s resignation from the first Luther cabinet in October 1925 to its reentry into the fourth Marx cabinet in January 1927. In particular, this chapter examines the deteriorating situation in the German countryside and increased pressure from organized agriculture for the DNVP to rejoin the national government in order to protect the domestic market against agricultural imports from abroad. Industry, too, had become frustrated with the DNVP’s absence in the national government and intensified its pressure on the party for a reassessment of its coalition strategy. But the patriotic Right – and particularly the Stahlhelm, which had fallen more and more under the influence of Theodor Duesterberg and the militantly anti-Weimar elements on its right wing – strongly resisted any move that might presage the DNVP’s return to the government. Shocked by the impressive showing of middle-class splinter parties in the Saxon state elections in late October 1926, the DNVP responded to overtures from the DVP and Center to explore the possibility of reorganizing the government in January and entered into negotiations that ended with its entry into the fourth Marx cabinet in January 1927.