#rp25 speaker Hedwig Richter: The return of the housewives - a phenomenon of crisis?

Why did Western societies reinvent the model of the housewife after the Second World War and enter the so-called “Golden Age of Marriage”? As Hedwig Richter says, “a barely concealed description of a world that offered men many advantages and women a great deal of discrimination”.

Maybe all of this was a response to the transformations of the chaotic post-war period. Especially in times of crisis, people tend to seek stability in the seemingly familiar and in supposedly eternal, natural orders – and the patriarchal order seems to qualify for this more than anything else.

Currently, the return to old gender roles seems to resonate again. At re:publica 25, the historian will discuss, among other things, whether we are experiencing something similar with the social media phenomenon of “tradwives”. She raises the question: how can we develop an emancipatory gender model that helps us to actively tackle current challenges?

Hedwig Richter teaches and researches as a historian at the University of the Bundeswehr in Munich. In 2023/24 she was a Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study (‘Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin’). Her work focuses on the question of democracy and ecology. In 2024, together with ZEIT journalist Bernd Ulrich, she published „Demokratie und Revolution. Wege aus der selbstverschuldeten ökologischen Unmündigkeit“ (‘Democracy and Revolution. Pathways out of self-inflicted ecological immaturity’). Her other books include „Aufbruch in die Moderne. Reform und Massenpolitisierung im Kaiserreich“ (‘‘Towards Modernity. Reform and Mass Politicisation in the German Empire’); „Demokratie. Eine deutsche Affäre. Vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart“ ('Democracy. A German affair. From the 18th century to the present day.'). Her research has been honored with the Anna Krüger Prize of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study. Hedwig Richter regularly writes for German media outlets like FAZ, taz, Süddeutsche and Spiegel.

The motto of re:publica 25 is ‘Generation XYZ’. What is your message for future generations with regard to the digital society?

Hedwig Richter: „Since the Enlightenment (more or less), people have believed that they can take things into their own hands as self empowered subjects. This can also be applied to artificial intelligence and how we let it organize gender relations.“