Democratic Women's League of Germany

{{Infobox organization

| name = Democratic Women's Federation of Germany

| native_name = Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands

| native_name_lang = de

| named_after =

| image = DFD Logo.png

| image_size =

| alt =

| caption = DFD logo

| logo = File:Flagge Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands.svg

| logo_size =

| logo_alt =

| logo_caption = DFD flag

| merged =

| successor =

| formation = {{start date and age|1947|03}}

| founder =

| founding_location =

| dissolved = 1990

| merger =

| type = Mass organization

| purpose = Women's rights

| membership = 1.5 million

| membership_year = 1988

| parent_organization = National Front

}}

The Democratic Women's League of Germany{{cite book| editor-last=Shreir |editor-first=Sally |title=Women's Movements of the World : an international directory and reference guide |date=1988 |publisher=Longman Group UK |isbn=978-0-89774-508-6 |url=https://archive.org/details/womensmovementso0000unse_f7f1/page/98/mode/2up|pages=99–100}}{{Cite book |last=Guenther |first=Katja |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=iuaDoLY1ksQC&dq=%22Democratic+Women's+League+of+Germany%22&pg=PR11 |title=Making Their Place: Feminism After Socialism in Eastern Germany |date=2010 |publisher=Stanford University Press |isbn=978-0-8047-7072-9 |location=Stanford |pages=31 |language=en |quote=The official women's group of the SED, the Democratic Women's League of Germany dominated women's organizational efforts in the GDR [...]}}{{Cite book |last=McCauley |first=Martin |author-link=Martin McCauley (historian) |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=W1mLCwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Democratic+Women's+Association+of+Germany%22&pg=PR10 |title=The German Democratic Republic since 1945 |date=1983 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-1-349-18403-3 |location=New York |pages=38 |language=en |quote=[...] the Democratic Women's Association of Germany (DFD) was founded in March 1947.}} ({{langx|de |Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands}}, or DFD) was the mass women's organisation in East Germany. It was one of the constituent members of the National Front and sent representatives to the Volkskammer. In 1988, membership was 1.5 million.Dirk Jurich, Staatssozialismus und gesellschaftliche Differenzierung: eine empirische Studie, p.32. LIT Verlag Münster, 2006, {{ISBN|3825898938}}

The DFD did not have much independence from the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED). Käte Selbmann, a member of the DFD's executive board, complained that it was "a pre-school for women, neither as central as the FDGB nor even more important than any other mass organization to women's work, and absolutely subordinate to the SED",{{cite journal |last1=Harsch |first1=Donna |title=Approach/Avoidance: Communists and Women in East Germany, 1945–9 |journal=Social History |date=2000 |volume=25 |issue=2 |pages=176–178, 180 |doi=10.1080/030710200363186 |jstor=4286643 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/4286643 |issn=0307-1022}} while historian Valerie Dubslaff writes that "the role of the department was therefore neither to represent the interests of women nor to promote them within the party, but to execute the political will of its leaders".{{cite journal |last1=Dubslaff |first1=Valérie |title=Les femmes en quête de pouvoir ? Le défi de la participation politique en République démocratique allemande (1949-1990) |journal=Allemagne d'aujourd'hui |date=2014 |volume=207 |issue=1 |page=37 |doi=10.3917/all.207.0033 |url=https://www.cairn.info/revue-allemagne-d-aujourd-hui-2014-1-page-33.htm?contenu=article |trans-title=Women in Search of Power? The Challenge of Political Participation in the German Democratic Republic (1949-1990) |language=fr |isbn=9782757406915 |via=Cairn.info}}