Ulle Schauws

Ulle Schauws, recorded by the federal returning officer as Ursula Schauws, is a German politician of Alliance 90/The Greens and a member of the Bundestag. She was born on 30 April 1966 in Hüls, now a district of Krefeld in North Rhine-Westphalia. She has sat in the Bundestag since 2013. The federal election that returned the 21st Bundestag was held on 23 February 2025, and members took their seats on 25 March 2025. Schauws was elected on place 5 of the North Rhine-Westphalia Green list and was also the party's candidate in constituency 113, Krefeld II – Wesel II.

Schauws passed the Abitur at the Gymnasium Thomaeum in Kempen. She studied film and television studies, political science, modern history, and women's and gender studies at the Free University of Berlin and Ruhr University Bochum, graduating as a Magistra Artium, and studied film and gender studies at the University of Glasgow. She also trained in film and media management. Before parliament she worked as a production manager, editor, junior producer and dramaturge on cinema, television and series productions; led projects for education providers on the labour market, nursing and health; did project development, case management and career guidance at SOS Children's Villages on the Lower Rhine; and was business manager of the Green group on Krefeld city council.

Since 2013 she has been the Green parliamentary group's spokesperson for women's policy. From 2013 to 2017 she was also its spokesperson for cultural policy and the group's lead member on the Committee on Culture and the Media, and she served as a parliamentary secretary until 2017. From 2017 to 2021 she was spokesperson for queer policy and deputy chair of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth. In the 21st Bundestag she is an ordinary member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and a deputy member of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Bundestag archive lists her as the Green candidate in the Krefeld/Meerbusch constituency in 2005 and, from 2009 onward, in the constituency covering Moers and Neukirchen-Vluyn. She did not win the constituency in 2021 or 2025. In 2021, when the district was numbered 114, the Greens received 17,398 first votes (13.4 percent). In 2025 the direct mandate in constituency 113 went to Kerstin Radomski of the Christian Democratic Union with 32.0 percent of first votes, ahead of Jan Dieren of the Social Democratic Party on 30.2 percent; the Greens took 12,133 first votes (8.7 percent) and 11.0 percent of second votes.

Early life and education

Childhood in Krefeld-Hüls

Ulle Schauws was born on 30 April 1966 in Hüls, in North Rhine-Westphalia. Hüls was then still an independent municipality: in the 1970 municipal reform it was incorporated into the town of Kempen, and in 1975 it was detached from Kempen and became part of the independent city of Krefeld, where it is the district Krefeld-Hüls. The current Bundestag biography gives the birthplace as Krefeld-Hüls, while the archived biography for the 20th legislative period gives Hüls (now Krefeld). Both pages note that the biographical details rest on information supplied by the member.

She grew up as a farmer’s daughter on her parents’ agricultural holding in Hüls. A 2021 Rheinische Post profile described the household as politically interested and shaped by argument, and reported that her father was a city councillor (Ratsherr) for the Christian Democratic Union. According to that profile, at the age of 15 she supported the Krefeld Appeal and took part in a large peace demonstration in Bonn against the NATO Double-Track Decision; the paper presented the episode as the point at which she was drawn into politics and away from her father’s party. The appeal came out of talks held in Krefeld on 15 and 16 November 1980. It asked the federal government to withdraw its consent to the stationing of Pershing II missiles and cruise missiles in Central Europe, and was intended to give the various protests against NATO’s 12 December 1979 rearmament decision a common text.

On her own website she describes herself, up to the Abitur, as a keen competitive athlete and a scout (Pfadfinderin), and as a young activist on the board of the “Notruf für vergewaltigte Frauen e.V.”, which she identifies with today’s Frauenberatungsstelle Krefeld. That counselling centre has operated since 1985 as a non-profit association offering advice to women and girls. In a 2013 interview she said she had been active in women’s politics from the age of 18, locally at the Krefeld women’s counselling centre.

Schooling and university studies

Schauws took her Abitur at the Gymnasium Thomaeum in Kempen. The school, the older of Kempen’s two Gymnasien, dates its foundation to 7 June 1659 and has used the former teacher-training seminary, built in 1910, as its old building since 1925.

The Bundestag biography records study of film and television studies, political science, modern history, and women’s and gender studies—not German studies—at the Free University of Berlin and Ruhr University Bochum, completed with the degree of Magistra Artium, and a scholarship period at the University of Glasgow. The archived biography describes the Glasgow stay as study abroad in film and gender studies and adds a further training in film and media management. The Rheinische Post likewise reported studies in Berlin and Bochum in those four fields.

Her own chronology places the Bochum course, in the same subjects and ending in the Magistra Artium, in 1988–1995, and dates the Glasgow scholarship, in film and television studies and gender studies, to 1991–1992; that timeline does not name Berlin separately. In 2013 she recalled about eight months in Glasgow as formative: she lived in an international flat in surroundings “not exactly marked by wealth,” found people there unusually open and helpful, and also worked on women’s projects in the social and cultural fields. The additional qualification in film and media management, noted by the Bundestag and in that interview, was the step from university into several years of work in film and television production.

Career before parliament

Film and television production

Before she entered the Bundestag in 2013, Ursula "Ulle" Schauws worked in film and television production, then on education and social projects, and finally as paid staff for a local party group. Published biographies describe those posts in production, project work and party administration; they do not describe her as a news journalist or as a public-relations officer. The Bundestag biography, which rests on members' own statements, lists her roles on cinema, television and series productions as unit manager during shoots (Aufnahmeleitung), junior producer, editor (Redakteurin) and dramaturge (Dramaturgin). In that listing the Redakteurin title sits with on-set and script jobs, not with a newsroom.

Local reporting puts the production spell at about five years and names settings, but not an employer. In September 2009 the Rheinische Post wrote that she had been an editor and dramaturge at a film agency and had left after five years. That spring the Westdeutsche Zeitung, reporting her nomination as a Bundestag candidate, said she had worked as a dramaturge in television in Cologne. A September 2013 Rheinische Post portrait said the five years were spent in film and television production at a freelance company, and that the work included the action series Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei. Official biographies do not name series or companies, and the newspaper accounts give no episodes or a formal credit. On her own site she places film and television work, the later social-sector jobs and the council-staff post on one line for 1995–2013, the span from the end of her studies to her entry into parliament, rather than as three jobs each lasting that whole period.

The 2013 profile said that this stretch of employment was interrupted by unemployment. In the same interview she called a year and a half at the CD shop Symphon on Petersstraße one of her favourite jobs; the article does not date that spell.

Social work and local Green staff

She then worked for education and training providers. The 2009 Rheinische Post reported a move to a provider in Bonn that carried out socio-political studies. The archived Bundestag biography for the 20th electoral term describes project leadership at such providers on the labour market, care and health. The Westdeutsche Zeitung referred more generally to tasks with independent providers in education and social services.

From 2004 she was employed at SOS-Kinderdorf Niederrhein, part of SOS Children's Villages. Official biographies list project development, case management (Fallmanagement) and career orientation (Berufsorientierung) there. The 2013 Rheinische Post is more specific about the casework: job placement for people receiving the basic unemployment benefit then known as Hartz IV, and a career-orientation project she built for pupils at Förderschulen, Germany's special schools.

About four years before that 2013 profile, the Krefeld organisation of Alliance 90/The Greens hired her as business manager of its group on the city council (Fraktionsgeschäftsführerin), a staff appointment rather than a council seat. The Rheinische Post wrote in September 2009 that she would stay in the job until the federal election, and in September 2013 that the party had taken her on about four years earlier. She left it on entering the Bundestag in 2013. In the register of members' prior occupations, the Bundestag publishes that Krefeld council-group post — business manager of the Alliance 90/The Greens group — as her employment before membership.

Local politics and party offices

Krefeld municipal roles

Schauws states that she joined Alliance 90/The Greens in 2002. Her elected municipal role in Krefeld was on a district body, not a seat on the city council. The city's statistical yearbooks list Ursula Schauws, as of 31 December 2004 and again as of 31 December 2007, among the Green members of the Bezirksvertretung for Stadtbezirk 5, Krefeld-Süd, second on that party's list of members. In a kreisfreie Stadt, the municipal code of North Rhine-Westphalia requires a Bezirksvertretung for each Stadtbezirk, elected directly for five years. Those bodies decide matters whose importance does not extend substantially beyond the district, within city-wide concerns and guidelines set by the council, including local public facilities, the townscape and district cultural affairs.

Bundestag biographies, which the parliament says rest on members' own information, add that until 2009 she also sat as a sachkundige Bürgerin on the Krefeld council's social and culture committees. The municipal code allows committees other than the main committee to appoint such expert citizens alongside councillors, provided they are fewer than the councillors on the committee. Krefeld reporting that names her from this period does not record particular committee votes or local disputes; what is documented is the membership lists and, later, campaign profiles. In September 2009 the Rheinische Post described her as still employed, until the federal election, as Fraktionsgeschäftsführerin of the Green group on the Krefeld council, a staff post separate from the district mandate.

Offices in the North Rhine-Westphalia Greens

She states that from 2004 she was a delegate to the Greens' federal women's council (Bundesfrauenrat), that from 2005 to 2013 she was spokesperson of the party's state working group on women (LAG Frauen), that from 2005 she was a delegate to district, state and federal party conferences, and that from 2010 to 2014 she was women's-policy spokesperson on the state executive. The archived biography for the 20th electoral term lists her as a delegate to the Bundesfrauenrat, to the federal working groups on women's policy and on lesbian policy, and to the federal delegate conference, and as a deputy delegate to the North Rhine-Westphalia state delegate conference. The Westdeutsche Zeitung identified her as the state executive's women's-policy spokesperson in November 2012, and Bundestag biographies record that office as ending in 2014.

The Green district association Niederrhein-Wupper was founded on 29 September 2006 from the former associations Niederrhein and Bergisches Land. It networks the Kreisverbände of Düsseldorf, Heinsberg, Kleve, Krefeld, Mönchengladbach, the Rhein-Kreis Neuss, Viersen, Wesel, Mettmann, Remscheid, Solingen and Wuppertal. Schauws states that she was on its board from 2011 to 2024, as chair until 2017 and then as an assessor (Beisitzerin). The biography for the 19th Bundestag term still described her as chair of the association, while the biography for the 20th term described her as an assessor. On 7 February 2024 the district council, meeting in Düsseldorf, recorded that she had left the board, together with Claudia Schmidt, Elias Ackburally and Lukas Mielczarek.

The same years included Bundestag candidacies, treated here as party selections rather than as election results. For 2005 the candidate archive Wen-wählen, using information from candidates, parties and the federal returning officer, listed her as the Green direct candidate in constituency 111, Krefeld I – Neuss II; her Bundestag biography calls that race the constituency Krefeld/Meerbusch. From 2009 the biography places the candidacy in the constituency of Moers and Neukirchen-Vluyn. On 3 May 2009 a members' meeting of the constituency Krefeld-Nord and Wesel, held at the Fabrik Heeder and attended by members from Moers and Neukirchen-Vluyn, nominated her unanimously; she was the only candidate and was 15th on the state list. She told that meeting that her priorities were women's, social and labour-market policy, including equal pay, ending income-splitting for married couples (Ehegattensplitting), and a basic child allowance.

Bundestag elections

Candidacies through 2017

Ulle Schauws (Ursula Schauws) stood for the Bundestag in the Krefeld area from 2005 and entered the chamber only from a state list, never by winning the local seat. In a federal election the first vote chooses a constituency candidate and the second vote a party list; list seats are filled in list order once each party's share of seats is set. An archived Bundestag biography records her as the 2005 candidate in the Krefeld/Meerbusch constituency and, in 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2021, as the candidate in the constituency covering Moers and Neukirchen-Vluyn.

On 18 September 2005, in constituency 111, Krefeld I – Neuss II, the Alliance 90/The Greens candidate received 6,994 first votes, 4.4 percent. Willy Wimmer of the Christian Democratic Union was elected with 75,258 votes (47.4 percent). Turnout was 79.4 percent. She was not seated. The Bundestag dates her membership from 2013.

For the 27 September 2009 election the North Rhine-Westphalia returning officer published her as number 15 on the Green state list for North Rhine-Westphalia. She told the Rheinische Post that she expected a seat if the Greens reached 11.4 percent in the federation and in the state. In constituency 115, Krefeld II – Wesel II, the same paper identified her as the Green candidate on 7.4 percent, matching the official Green total of 9,462 first votes. Siegmund Ehrmann of the Social Democratic Party won with 50,636 votes (39.6 percent), ahead of Kerstin Radomski (CDU) on 44,906 (35.1 percent). Turnout was 70.9 percent.

The constituency was renumbered 114 for 22 September 2013. Ehrmann again took the seat, with 53,578 first votes (41.5 percent) against 51,835 (40.1 percent) for the CDU. The Green first-vote total was 6,888 (5.3 percent), just behind Die Linke on 5.4 percent, and turnout was 71.8 percent. On election night Schauws told the Rheinische Post that place 13 on the North Rhine-Westphalia Green list would probably be enough if the Alternative for Germany missed the threshold for Bundestag entry, and she took a seat for the first time. The Bundestag records that mandate as a state-list seat.

On 24 September 2017 Radomski won constituency 114 for the CDU with 48,817 first votes (37.0 percent). The SPD candidate received 42,219 (32.0 percent) and the Greens 8,063 (6.1 percent); Green second votes were 9,307 (7.0 percent). Turnout was 74.6 percent. In the state returning officer's notice of members elected from state lists, Ursula (Ulle) Schauws, a film and television scholar from Krefeld, is number 11 on the Green list.

The 2021 and 2025 elections

Constituency 114 was contested again on 26 September 2021. Jan Ulrich Dieren (SPD) won it with 45,852 first votes (35.2 percent); the CDU candidate had 37,033 (28.4 percent). The federal returning officer recorded 17,398 Green first votes (13.4 percent), 7.2 points above 2017, and 19,539 Green second votes (15.0 percent). Turnout was 74.9 percent of 175,852 people eligible to vote. The state returning officer's candidate file placed Ursula Schauws ninth on the North Rhine-Westphalia Green list, and the Bundestag again lists her mandate as a list seat for constituency 114 rather than a direct win.

The next election was held early, on 23 February 2025. The traffic-light coalition of the SPD, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party broke up on 6 November 2024; Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote on 16 December; and on 27 December President Frank-Walter Steinmeier dissolved the Bundestag and set the 2025 German federal election for 23 February. At a state delegates' conference in Bielefeld, the North Rhine-Westphalia Greens chose their list for that ballot. A party notice published on 8 December 2024 said that about 280 delegates had, the previous Saturday, elected Ulle Schauws to place 5, after Britta Haßelmann, Katharina Dröge, Irene Mihalic and Sven Lehmann. The admitted-candidate roll lists her as Ursula Schauws, list place 5, and as the Green candidate in the renumbered constituency 113, Krefeld II – Wesel II.

That constituency covers the Krefeld districts Nord, Hüls, Mitte and Ost, plus Moers and Neukirchen-Vluyn in the district of Wesel. The federal returning officer's final figures give the Greens 12,133 first votes (8.7 percent), 4.6 points below 2021, and 15,368 second votes (11.0 percent). Kerstin Radomski (CDU) won the direct mandate with 44,412 votes (32.0 percent). Jan Dieren (SPD) was second with 41,999 (30.2 percent), and Hauke Finger of the Alternative for Germany third with 23,421 (16.9 percent). Turnout was 80.9 percent of 173,314 eligible voters. The federal directory of those elected places Schauws on the North Rhine-Westphalia Green list at place 5, with a candidacy in constituency 113 and no constituency percentage of her own, and the Bundestag records the mandate as a state-list seat.

Parliamentary offices

Committees and spokesperson posts

Schauws has been a member of the Bundestag since 2013. The Bundestag group of Alliance 90/The Greens lists her as its spokesperson for women's policy, a function her biographies date from 2013. In the 18th electoral term she was also the group's spokesperson for cultural policy. The biography she supplied for the 19th term describes her, from 2018, as the group's spokesperson on women's and queer policy. The text now on her Bundestag profile, which the parliament notes is the member's own account, dates the queer brief and a brief for family, youth and senior citizens from 2017 to 2025. Her own site places the queer brief from 2017 and the combined portfolio for women, family, youth, senior citizens and queer policy in 2021–2025. For the 21st Bundestag the group's page again names women's policy as her faction function and does not list the queer brief.

In the 18th Bundestag the membership list records her as a full member of the Committee on Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and of the Committee on Culture and the Media, and as the Green group's coordinator (Obfrau) on the culture committee. She was a deputy member of that term's Subcommittee on Civic Engagement. On 16 January 2014 the plenary unanimously adopted the joint nominations in Drucksache 18/289, which included her among the Greens, as parliamentary secretaries (Schriftführerinnen und Schriftführer). Her later biographical text says that the secretaryship lasted until 2017.

During the 19th electoral term she remained a full member of the family committee. The committee's report on the term names her as deputy chair and Sabine Zimmermann of Die Linke as chair, and the archived list of offices also records her as the Green Obfrau on the committee. A Bundestag interview in 2018 already identified her as deputy chair. She was a deputy member of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection. For the Commission on the Reform of Federal Electoral Law and the Modernisation of Parliamentary Work, constituted in June 2021, the Bundestag named her as the Green substitute, beside Britta Haßelmann as the full member.

In the 20th electoral term, 2021–2025, she was again a full member of the family committee and was not listed as its deputy chair. She was a deputy member of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development, of the Legal Affairs Committee, and of the Subcommittee on Global Health. When a further electoral-law commission was set up in that term, the factions nominated her as a full member. In the 2021 coalition negotiations of the Social Democratic Party, Alliance 90/The Greens and the Free Democratic Party, she negotiated for the Greens in the working group on equality and diversity.

Since the 21st Bundestag met on 25 March 2025 she has been a full member of the Committee on Education, Family, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth and a deputy member of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development. The parliament's profile data date both assignments, and her membership of the Bundestag in this term, from 25 March 2025.

Interparliamentary groups and external bodies

Published rolls of parliamentary-group executives list her as a deputy chair of the group for the Southern African Development Community states in the 18th term and of the Parliamentary Group on Southern Africa in the 19th and 20th terms. In the 20th term she was also a deputy chair of the Parliamentary Group on Malta and Cyprus. In the 21st term the Bundestag lists her as chair of the Parliamentary Group on Eastern Africa and as deputy chair of the German–South Asian Parliamentary Group. A press notice of 22 October 2026 described her as leading an Eastern Africa delegation to Tanzania and Rwanda from 25 October to 1 November 2026, with members from the CDU/CSU, the SPD and Die Linke.

The same profile lists her as a substitute member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. She was not among the members or substitutes proposed for that delegation in Drucksache 21/339 of 4 June 2025. According to the biographical notes she provided to the Bundestag, she has taken part in the programme "Parlamentarier schützen Parlamentarier".

Disclosed honorary seats tied to the mandate include the board of trustees of the Foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and Future. The 19th-term biography describes that seat as held for the Green parliamentary group; the 21st-term disclosure register lists a co-opted honorary membership. The Federal Foundation for Gender Equality named her in September 2025 as its Green council member for the 21st legislative period, with Filiz Polat as substitute; the 20th-term register had already listed her on that council. In the 21st term the register also lists an honorary trusteeship of the Federal Foundation "Mother and Child – Protection of Unborn Life". In the 20th term it listed a deputy trusteeship of the Federal Agency for Civic Education from 26 April 2022 and, until the end of June 2022, a deputy trusteeship of the Federal Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation. She sits on the Parliamentary Advisory Council on Population and Development, an informal cross-party body whose secretariat is provided by the German Foundation for World Population; the foundation named her among the members when the council held its constitutive meeting of the 21st term on 10 July 2025. From that date the disclosure register also records an honorary seat on the foundation's executive board.

Gender equality, family and queer policy

Women's policy and protection from violence

Since entering the Bundestag in 2013, Ulle Schauws has been the women's-policy spokesperson of the parliamentary group of Alliance 90/The Greens and a member of the committee for family affairs, senior citizens, women and youth. The 19th-term archive lists her as the committee's deputy chair and, from 2018, as spokesperson for women's and queer policy. Her later biography, from her own disclosures, dates the queer, family, youth and senior-citizens briefs to 2017–2025.

The Council of Europe's Istanbul Convention, in force for Germany since 2018, framed that work. In a November 2019 debate on a Die Linke motion, Schauws said ratification was not implementation and urged dropping the reservation to Article 59, so migrant women who gave evidence would not lose a residence route and shelter would not depend on immigration status. In December 2024 she told Das Parlament that protection from violence was still politically marginal except around 25 November, and that a shelter place "must no longer be regarded as a voluntary benefit" when women, usually with children, were turned away.

A statute came at the close of the 20th term. On 29 January 2025 the family committee, with Schauws as a rapporteur, recommended the bill of the Social Democratic Party and the Greens for an assistance system against gender-based and domestic violence, and the rejection of separate motions from the Free Democratic Party and Die Linke. The report cites 2023 police figures of 256,276 victims of domestic violence, 70.5 percent of them female, and more than 364 women a day recorded as victims of intimate-partner violence. Its account of the compromise with the CDU/CSU records €2.6 billion in federal funds over ten years. The Violence Assistance Act, dated 24 February 2025, took effect on 28 February 2025; the individual entitlement to protection and counselling begins only on 1 January 2032.

Abortion law and reproductive rights

Abortion in Germany is still shaped by the Federal Constitutional Court's rulings of 1975 and 1993. Under section 218 of the Criminal Code an abortion is in principle unlawful, but within twelve weeks it is not punished if a physician performs it after mandatory counselling and a three-day wait. The 2021 coalition agreement promised to repeal the information ban in section 219a, to have abortions paid for and included in medical training, and to appoint a commission on regulation outside criminal law.

On 24 June 2022 the Bundestag repealed section 219a, with the coalition and Die Linke in favour and the CDU/CSU and the Alternative for Germany against. Schauws cited a reported fall of more than half in physicians performing abortions and said an abortion "does not belong in the Criminal Code". Lisa Paus said section 218 had to be discussed; Marco Buschmann of the FDP kept the sections apart and said abortion was not being legalised; Heidi Reichinnek of the Left called the repeal a first step. Schauws later told Das Parlament that a 2018 charge — that 219a was a pretext for reopening section 218 — had been false, though the row had shown how short the supply of care was.

On 15 April 2024 the Commission on Reproductive Self-Determination recommended that an early abortion be lawful, not merely exempt from punishment. Buschmann called any discussion of consequences premature. The German bishops' standing council said dignity was not gradable, abortion should not be normalised, and sections 218 ff. with the Pregnancy Conflict Act should stay. The council of the Evangelical Church in Germany called the conflict irresolvable, said the woman must decide, and found the later members' bill "in principle acceptable" because it avoided stigma; chair Bishop Kirsten Fehrs said abortion rules alone would not protect both lives.

On 14 November 2024 Carmen Wegge of the SPD and Schauws headed Drucksache 20/13775. The signatories, more than 200 and including Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other ministers, came mainly from the SPD, the Greens and the Left. An abortion on request would have been lawful until the end of the twelfth week after conception and placed in the Pregnancy Conflict Act; counselling would have stayed compulsory, the three-day wait would have gone, and statutory health insurance would have paid. Later abortions would have remained generally unlawful, and criminal law would have covered chiefly abortions against or without the woman's will. Schauws said first signatories had risen from about 240 to 327, "a strong signal"; at the first reading the reported figure was 328.

At the 5 December first reading she said section 218 had, since 1871, denied women the right to decide on pregnancy and therefore on life and body. Gyde Jensen of the FDP agreed that women should not face a criminal offence, but not in a rush. Dorothee Bär of the CSU said the unborn child was being discounted; Beatrix von Storch of the AfD called punishment-free abortion already dreadful. Christian Dürr promised the FDP a free vote and doubted the time. Buschmann told the Catholic Academy the old compromise had kept social peace and would likely fail at the constitutional court if simply deleted. Friedrich Merz objected to the speed. Sent to the legal-affairs committee, the bill was not adopted before the Bundestag ended. Schauws told Die Tageszeitung on 18 December that blocking a hearing was "absolutely unusual and disrespectful", and counted 353 supporters among the SPD, Greens, Left and the South Schleswig Voters' Association toward 367, plus ten announced by the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. To Claudia Heine of Das Parlament she said thirty years of the law had not cut abortions, and that the label "unlawful" produced guilt for women and stigma for doctors — in Bavaria, trouble for a practice known to provide them — while also blocking insurance payment and training. Bodily self-determination, she said, weighed more heavily than in 1993, when the judgment itself had contained dissents.

Queer policy and family affairs

In the 2021 coalition talks Schauws sat for the Greens on equality and diversity. The treaty promised to replace the Transsexuals Act with registry-office self-declaration of sex marker and name, a disclosure ban, insurance coverage of gender-affirming treatment and a compensation fund, together with a national action plan and equal parentage for two-mother families. The Self-Determination Act passed on 12 April 2024. The CDU/CSU opposed it; Dorothee Bär and other Union critics said a change of legal gender by declaration, without an expert opinion, risked misuse in single-sex spaces and did too little for minors. Parentage law did not move: a 2024 draft recognising a second mother without stepchild adoption died with the coalition in November, and family groups said the adoption requirement remained. The family bill that passed was the violence-assistance law Schauws reported for the Greens and agreed with the Union.

Culture, media and international work

Culture and media, 2013–2017

From 2013 to 2017 Ulle Schauws was cultural-policy spokesperson of the Alliance 90/The Greens in the Bundestag, and the 18th term's list of offices records her as a full member and Obfrau of the Committee on Culture and the Media. The 21st Bundestag no longer lists her on that committee. A March 2015 profile said she backed Pro Quote Regie, for more women directors in public-service television, and cited ARD's Tatort, of which, she said, women directed 7.5 percent from 2010 to 2013 and men 92.5 percent. Some committee members thought politics should not intervene; she treated the gap as a case for fairness for women across culture and media.

On 15 October 2014 she was the first signatory of the Green motion "Grundlagen für Gleichstellung im Kulturbetrieb schaffen" (Drucksache 18/2881). It cited a German Cultural Council survey for 1995–2000 finding women in about 3 percent of state-theatre intendancies, 2013 Künstlersozialkasse averages of 21,427 euros for insured men and 15,955 for women, and a Pro Quote Regie count that 13 of 115 German Federal Film Fund projects that year had women directors. It asked for a new study and for federal grants to require gender parity in leadership, scholarships, commissions, orchestras, contemporary exhibitions and juries, with exceptions only for stated artistic reasons, and for the Länder and municipalities to be urged to follow.

A hearing on 11 November 2015 included Maria Mohr of Pro Quote Regie. On 13 January 2016 the CDU/CSU said the commissioner's own study was already under way, welcomed parity on juries, and argued that other demands would distort competition and limit artistic freedom; the SPD said the sector was too varied for uniform rules. Committee and plenary rejected the motion on 19 February 2016, the CDU/CSU and SPD against the Left and the Greens. Schauws and Sigrid Hupach of the Left said about 83 percent of film-funding money went to films directed by men and that quotas would correct a distortion; Hiltrud Lotze (SPD) and Ursula Groden-Kranich (CDU/CSU) backed parity juries but wanted the study first, and Groden-Kranich called equality a social task, not only a statutory one.

The study, presented at the end of June 2016, put women generally at 10 to 30 percent of leadership posts, prizes and public funding, with a 24 percent pay gap, and recommended quotas for selection panels. Monika Grütters and Cultural Council director Olaf Zimmermann rejected a Pro Quote Regie proposal to split public grants equally, as an intrusion on artistic freedom, and Grütters called a round table instead of the binding rules the motion had sought.

On 3 July 2014 a speech she placed on the record welcomed a bill, passed with no votes against, to stabilise the Künstlersozialkasse levy, but called it only a first step: many cultural workers stayed outside the fund, and low pay and old-age poverty would remain. Her motion of 17 May 2017, Drucksache 18/12373, asked to keep the fund, insure the self-employed by income, add a guarantee pension above basic assistance after 30 years including artists'-scheme time, and open unemployment benefit after four months of contributions. It also sought fair pay as a condition of grants, gender monitoring, more participation projects for children and young people, and published tests of "national significance", calling support for the Potsdam Garrison Church, an orchestras programme and the Freedom and Unity Monument opaque. The 18th-term register listed her as an unpaid trustee of the Bundesakademie für musikalische Jugendbildung in Trossingen.

In a taz interview of 8 July 2015 she said memorial culture still had "many blind spots". Germany, she argued, had cast itself as a lesser colonial power, yet should apologise for the mass killings of the Herero uprising in present-day Namibia, recognise them as genocide, and rename streets honouring colonial figures rather than leave that work to groups such as Berlin Postkolonial. Schoolbooks and memorial sites, she added, still lacked the memories of people with a history of migration.

Development cooperation and parliamentary diplomacy

Since 2021 she has been a deputy member of the Committee on Economic Cooperation and Development, still listed in the 21st Bundestag, and in the 20th term a deputy on the Subcommittee on Global Health. After that term ended early, Deutsches Ärzteblatt reported that members expected the subcommittee not to return. CDU rapporteur Sascha van Beek cited the smaller House and proposed quarterly health-committee debates; former deputy chair Johannes Wagner of the Greens called the loss, with cuts to development spending, a "fatal signal". The administration said no formal decision had yet been announced.

The Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung lists her as a deputy spokesperson of its Parliamentary Advisory Board for Population and Development. The board's published agenda is German engagement on the 2030 development goals, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, contraception and HIV prevention, sexuality education, and the rights of girls and women.

Her 20th-term biography listed her as deputy chair of the friendship group for Southern Africa. The 21st Bundestag names her chair of the Eastern Africa group, deputy chair of the German–South Asian group, and a substitute in the German delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. On 22 October 2026 it announced she would lead a delegation to Tanzania and Rwanda from 25 October to 1 November, with Carsten Brodesser (CDU/CSU), Derya Türk-Nachbaur (SPD) and Clara Bünger (the Left): the programme named the Tanzanian parliament, government and opposition, talks in Zanzibar, and in Rwanda the 1994 genocide, a wreath at the Kigali Genocide Memorial for more than 800,000 people killed, and the shared colonial past.

Personal life

Partnership and residence

The biography published by the Bundestag states that Schauws lives in a registered civil partnership (eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft) and does not name her partner. Local reporting has been more specific. In September 2013 the Rheinische Post wrote that she and her partner, Marita Baums, had bought a house on Tenderingstraße in the north-western district of Krefeld and had replanted the garden with native plants; the same profile noted three cats in the household. She was already living on that street with her partner in 2009, when she told the paper she intended to remain in Krefeld.

In September 2017 the Westdeutsche Zeitung reported that she lived in Krefeld's Belgian Quarter (belgisches Viertel). An August 2021 Rheinische Post portrait again described her as living in Krefeld with her partner in a registered partnership, and quoted her: "Wir wohnen in einem Altbau mit drei Katzen" ("We live in an old building with three cats"). The paper added that during Bundestag sitting weeks she stayed in Berlin. The Bundestag biography still records the partnership without naming the partner.

Separate from seats on parliamentary and foundation boards, those biographies list civic memberships. The current entry names Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU), Amnesty International, the supporters' association of the KRESCHtheater in Krefeld, and a voluntary place on the advisory board of Frauenberatungsstelle Krefeld, a women's counselling centre in the city. The biography for the 20th electoral period (2021–2025) also listed Folklorefest Krefeld, which does not appear on the later page.

Health and public disclosure

On 22 August 2024 Schauws published a statement on her website under the heading "Ich bin wieder da" ("I'm back"). She wrote that at the beginning of 2024 she had received a diagnosis of breast cancer, that she had set her duties as a member of the Bundestag aside and entered medical treatment immediately, and that she regarded the prognosis as positive, the intensive treatment of the preceding months as very successful, and a full recovery as well advanced. She said she was returning to political work.

The Westdeutsche Zeitung added detail in an interview published on 3 September 2024. It reported that she had withdrawn completely from public appearances for seven months and had been treated at the Helios-Klinikum. She told the paper that she was well and that, after very intensive treatment, full recovery was on a good path; she had taken no appointments in the constituency or in Berlin during those seven months, while work with her staff, including on women's and family policy, had continued in the background. By then Alliance 90/The Greens from Krefeld, Moers and Neukirchen-Vluyn had again nominated her as direct candidate for constituency 113, Krefeld II – Wesel II. The Rheinische Post reported that a members' meeting on 24 August 2024 chose her with 96.9 percent of the vote.