party has been marginalised in the west since making several breakthroughs in 2007–2010. Since 2010, it has lost representation in the Landtags of Lower Saxony, North Rhine-Westphalia, and Schleswig-Holstein. Generally growing popularity in the west has also been offset by major losses in most of its eastern heartland since 2014. The Left's voter demographics are skewed strongly by region. In the east, Left voters and members trend much older: in 2018, 44% of the party's members in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern were 76 years or older. Meanwhile, in the west, the party membership is male-dominated, with two-thirds of western members being men. Women Women have been well-represented amongst elected representatives from The Left. The party's gender quota requires that at least half of the party's ruling bodies and representatives should be female. In 2021, the party elected two women, Janine Wissler and Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, as federal co-chairs for the first time. Amongst the party membership however, the proportion of women has decreased in recent years, contrary to the trend of increasing female membership observed among other parties. Female membership in the PDS was stable at around 45% during the 1990s and 2000s, far higher than any other party, but fell to 39% post-merger in 2007 since the large majority of WASG members were male. Nonetheless, the party had the highest representation of women in its membership until it was overtaken by the Greens in 2012. In 2019, 36.4% of Left members were female, compared to 41% for the Greens and 33% for the SPD. After the 2009 election, the party's Bundestag group was 52.6% female, second only to the Greens (57.4%). In 2013, this increased slightly to 54.7%, which was the highest of any group. After both the 2017 and 2021 federal elections, The Left's group was 54% female, second to the Greens (58%). Controversies Observation by Constitutional Protection The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz, abbreviated as BfV or Verfassungsschutz) is the German federal domestic security agency, tasked with intelligence-gathering on threats concerning the democratic order, the existence and security of the federation or one of its states. This includes monitoring and reporting on suspected extremist groups and political parties. Members of The Left and groups within the party have been periodically monitored, sometimes leading to controversy. The Verfassungsschutz does not consider the party in its entirety extremist, but monitors several of its internal factions and groupings.