Alice Sophie Schwarzer (born 3 December 1942) is a German journalist and prominent feminist. She is founder and publisher of the German feminist journal EMMA. Beginning in France, she became a forerunner of feminist positions against anti-abortion laws, for economic self-sufficiency for women, against pornography, prostitution, female genital mutilation, and for a fair position of women in Islam. She authored many books, including biographies of Romy Schneider, Marion Dönhoff and herself. Biography and positions Schwarzer was born in Wuppertal, the daughter of young single mother, and was raised by her grandparents in Wuppertal; she described them as anti-Nazis. During World War II, they were evacuated to Bavaria, only returning to the Ruhr district in 1950. After learning French in Paris, Schwarzer began a trainee job in journalism in Düsseldorf in 1966, and was sent to Paris as a correspondent. From 1970 to 1974, she worked as a freelancer for different media outlets in Paris. At the same time, she studied psychology and sociology in classes lectured by Michel Foucault, among others. Schwarzer met Jean-Paul Sartre and Daniel Cohn-Bendit. She was one of the founders of the Feminist Movement in Paris (Mouvement de libération des femmes, MLF), and also spread their ideas to Germany. In April 1971, Schwarzer joined Simone de Beauvoir, Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, and 340 French women in publicly announcing that they had had illegal abortions, in a successful campaign to legalize abortion in France. She convinced the Stern magazine to do something similar in Germany; and in June 1971, Schwarzer and 374 German women, including Romy Schneider and Senta Berger, confessed that they had an abortion in a successful campaign to legalize abortion in Germany. Decades later, Schwarzer revealed she had never had an abortion. She called her project Frauen gegen den § 218 ("Women against Section 218", which was the section of the German Penal Code that made abortion illegal). In autumn 1971, Schwarzer released her first book of the same title. The law was changed by the German Constitutional Court abortion decision, 1975. One of Schwarzer's best-known books is Der kleine Unterschied und seine großen Folgen (The little difference and its great consequences), which was released in 1975 and made her famous beyond Germany. It was translated into eleven languages. Since its release, Schwarzer has become Germany's most high-profile but also most controversial feminist. One of her goals was the realization of economic self-sufficiency for