A boss who offers a female employee to work sitting on his lap because there is no desk available for her; a guest who tells the waitress he wants to eat “pussy” when she asks him what he’d like to order; a man who wonders why a woman works in computing even though “she is pretty”.
Germany has been abuzz with tweets, newspaper headlines, radio programmes and TV debates about everyday sexism since last week when a reporter at Stern magazine published an article alleging that a senior member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition made sexist comments about her breasts.
Headlined “Gentleman’s Humour”, Laura Himmelreich described in her article how Rainer Bruederle, the 67-year-old leader of the Free Democrats, junior partners in the government, allegedly told her during drinks at a party event that she could “really fill a dirndl”, the low cut Bavarian traditional dress, with her breasts.
What initially stirred a controversy over the relationship between reporters and politicians quickly turned into a much wider debate about everyday sexism when blogger Anne Wizorek turned to Twitter on Friday to ask others to share their experiences with sexual innuendo and harassment.
Using the hashtag #aufschrei (outcry), thousands of women, and some men, took to Twitter to talk about what they had been exposed to in the streets, workplaces and bars of Germany. By Sunday #aufschrei had attracted more than 60,000 posts and the number is growing.
