The Times today has an interesting piece on Wetlands, a supposedly "raunchy" and "scatological" German novel about an 18-year old girl, written by self-described feminist writer Charlotte Roche. Reporter Nicholas Kulish uses the public debate surrounding the popular book to consider the state of women in Germany. Though the country has a female chancellor, Angela Merkel, it lags in other measures of gender equity. German women earn 22 percent less than men, the largest wage gap in any European country except for the comparatively under-developed Cyprus and Estonia. A good reminder that women's leadership, for all we've been hailing it this week as Hillary drops out of the race, is not a fix-all for women's issues.
--Dana Goldstein
