for a few months during 1998, as a deputy leader of the SPD group in the parliament. Senator In November 1998 she became a Berlin senator, taking the important portfolio encompassing labour, social affairs and women in the city administration of Mayor Eberhard Diepgen. She took the post in succession to Christine Bergmann, who had accepted an unexpected invitation from Chancellor Schröder to make a switch into national politics. The next year her participation in the Berlin state election became particularly memorable, thanks to the poster accompanying her campaign slogan, "Gabi - [a] stronger step for social justice" ("... starker Auftritt für soziale Gerechtigkeit"). The poster was a pointed response to the campaign poster of Mayor Diepgen, her senatorial boss but political opponent in the governing coalition: Diepgen in his own election publicity had used an image featuring running shoes, to illustrate his energetic approach to his senatorial and mayoral responsibilities. The image accompanying Schöttler's own slogan simply showed an elegant foot and ankle encased in an exceptionally high stiletto shoe, of which the spike was piercing the toe section of a running shoe containing - the viewer was presumably intended to infer - a foot. Schöttler's poster-slogan combination caught the attention of the national media. Gabriele Schöttler is a small woman, and much of the ensuing press reporting centred not on her agenda for social justice in Berlin, but on the nature and extent of her personal shoe collection. Reassuringly, it was reported that she owned "nowhere near as many shoes as Imelda Marcos", but there were nevertheless around 40 pairs (including plenty of shoes and winter boots with very high heels). Despite the poster she retained her senatorial portfolio in Mayor Diepgen's following the 1999 election even though the election had delivered a small reduction in the SPD vote share, leading to a reduction in the number of senatorial seats allocated to it in the city's senate coalition. She also retained it when Mayor Diepgen was succeeded as mayor by her SPD colleague Klaus Wowerweit following the Berlin Bank scandal. However, the new administration proved unstable due to the underlying balance of seats in the Berlin parliament, and when fresh state elections were called for October 2001 she resigned her senate seat. Once the results were declared, it turned out that she had, in addition, failed to retain her seat in the city parliament, which went instead to