Becoming the first transgender women to have won parliamentary seats, two German politicians from Germany's Greens party have created history on Sunday's federal elections.
Tessa Ganserer and Nyke Slawik who contested for the Greens party came third in the election. The share of the vote rose to 14.8% from 8.9% and is ready to play a key role in facilitating a new three-way coalition government.
44-year-old, Ganserer said, “It is a historic victory for the Greens, but also for the trans-emancipatory movement and the entire queer community."
Speaking on her win, Ganserer said that the outcome of the election is symbolic, showing a more open and tolerant society.
Tessa Ganserer stood from Nuremberg in southeastern Bavaria and Nyke Slawik, 27, from North Rhine-Westphalia.
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Ganserer was first elected to Bavaria’s regional parliament in 2013 and was the first to appear as transgender in 2018 when serving in the German parliament.
On Ganserer’s priority list, an easier procedure for authorising a change of gender and name on the identity documents and wants to bring transformation in-laws that would allow lesbians mothers to adopt children.
In an Instagram post, the 27-year-old Slawik said that she could not believe the results as she secured a seat in the parliament through the Greens list of candidates in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. She wrote, “Madness! I still can’t quite believe it, but with this historic election result I will definitely be a member of the next Bundestag.”
As part of her political agenda, Slawik has called for a nationwide action plan to curb rising homophobia and transphobia, a self-determination law and improvements to the federal anti-discrimination law.
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Even though Germany had decriminalised homosexuality in 1969 and legalised same-sex marriage in 2017, there was a 36% rise in hate crimes over the last year against the LGBT+ community according to the police.
This figure highlights a rising wave of homophobia across parts of Germany.