The biggest legislative challenges, which Dr. Maria Hagemeyer identified in the early 1950s and outlined in three "memoranda," were the Civil Code, which dated back to 1900, and family law, which still contained many regulations from the Nazi era.

However, her ideas for reforming the traditional image of marriage and family with the help of legislation and eliminating male supremacy were not universally welcomed. While the Social Democrats, for example, largely agreed with Hagemeyer's positions, conservative circles saw the downfall of the Christian West looming. High-ranking church representatives never tired of glorifying men as "the natural bearers of the authority required by the principle of marital order."

In return, wives should be allowed to run the household on their own responsibility, in addition to their own gainful employment, as long as their duties in marriage and family did not suffer as a result. The main point of contention was Section 1354 of the German Civil Code (BGB). Since 1900, it had stated: "The husband has the right to decide on all matters concerning the joint marital life; in particular, he determines the place of residence and the home. The wife is not obliged to comply with the husband's decision if the decision constitutes an abuse of his rights." According to the majority opinion in the Federal Cabinet, the new Section 1354 should be worded similarly, as the differences in the draft bills presented in 1952 and then again in 1954 were only marginal. (In the Bundesrat, Rhineland-Palatinate was one of the states that did not want to abandon Section 1354.)

The husband's right of final decision had survived several turning points in history. And the so-called casting vote almost made it into the law passed in 1957. By a razor-thin majority, the responsible Bundestag committee voted against the right of final decision. CDU member of parliament Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt was particularly instrumental in securing this narrow majority. Unlike many other members of her party, including female members, the future first female federal minister did not want to give husbands the final say by law again. Accordingly, § 1354 was deleted from the draft law without replacement.

However, in the decisive debate on May 3, 1957, her CDU parliamentary group tabled an amendment and once again called for men to have the final say, now also referred to as ultimate responsibility. Among the CDU members of parliament who strongly supported the amendment was Dr. Helene Weber. Just a few years earlier, she had fought alongside Dr. Elisabeth Selbert, Friederike Nadig, and Helene Wessel for Article 3, Paragraph 2 of the Basic Law... The debate over the concrete implications of the principle of equal rights was thus not only conducted between the parties in the first and second Bundestag, but also within the parliamentary groups themselves. Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt and Helene Weber, for example, took different positions in the debate.

The SPD parliamentary group was more homogeneous. Quite a few of its speakers saw the right of final decision as a revival of patriarchal orders, since in marriages there could only be joint responsibility, but not purely male responsibility.

FDP member Dr. Marie-Elisabeth Lüders and Margot Kalinke, a member of Die PARTEI (DP/FVP), argued similarly. Ultimately, however, they did not question the traditional image of the family. In the actual roll-call vote, 186 members of parliament and nine of the Berlin members voted against the reintroduction of the husband's final decision-making privilege and thus against a new § 1354. A total of 177, however, were in favor. [In 1957, only 54 of a total of 497 members of parliament were female, which corresponds to a share of 11 percent. Of the 22 female CDU members of parliament, eight others joined Elisabeth Schwarzhaupt in voting no, three abstained, and one was on leave. The SPD and FDP voted unanimously against a new Section 1354, as did the All-German Block/Union of Expellees and Disenfranchised Persons.

The three women who represented Rhineland-Palatinate in the Bundestag represented the entire spectrum of voting opinions. Annemarie Ackermann of the CDU abstained, Maria Dietz (CDU) from Mainz voted in favor of the old § 1354, and Luise Herklotz (SPD) from Speyer voted against it. The voting behavior was different when it came to the equally controversial issue of the father's final decision-making right. If the mothers disagreed, fathers should continue to have the final say, as in the old BGB. The majority agreed with this position and thus with the draft law – but around two years later, the Federal Constitutional Court overturned this one-sided male privilege. The other amendments to the BGB, which the Bundestag also passed on May 3, 1957, played a lesser role in the debate and then also in public perception.

Newly introduced was, for example, the community of accrued gains, including provisions for the event of divorce. Working wives were now also better protected against their husbands simply quitting their jobs. Provisions were also made, for example, for remarriage and the status of stepchildren or children born out of wedlock.

In the final vote, the law was passed unanimously – or as Bundestag Vice President Dr. Richard Jaeger put it: "Ladies and gentlemen, the German Bundestag has thus completed one of its most significant legislative achievements in the implementation of the Basic Law."

However, FDP member Dr. Wolfgang Stammberger probably spoke from the heart of many parliamentarians when he said: "Ladies and gentlemen, Ms. Weber quite rightly spoke earlier about the division of roles between spouses in marriage, namely that the man's primary role is to earn a living and the woman's primary role is to create the atmosphere and domestic security that the man needs in order to be able to earn a living." While the minutes still note merriment and applause at this point, he received only applause for his next sentences: "We male members of this House, who are in a state of constant change, are particularly aware of the advantage of a married man over a bachelor. And the fact that the domestic comfort created by our wives is significantly more enjoyable than bachelorhood is evident from the enthusiasm and eagerness with which we always go home for the weekend."

The plenary minutes make no mention of the eagerness of female members of parliament to go home for the weekend. In any case, women had to wait 20 years for the next major reform of marriage and family law in 1977.