Addressing gender equality in Switzerland
Participants in alliance F’s 2019 campaign, “Helvetia is calling”, which focused on coaching women politicians and encouraging political parties to include more women candidates on their electoral lists.
While unequal power relations are created and perpetuated by legal, political, economic, and cultural systems, we believe there is great capacity to change these systems for the better of all. The Issues Affecting Women Programme supports women’s efforts to build, lead, and grow strong, vibrant, and influential movements that achieve equity and justice. We would like to highlight this process in action in Switzerland, where Oak has its main administrative office.
The symbol of the Swiss women’s movement has long been a snail – symbolising the slow rate of progress. Nowhere is this more evident than women’s suffrage, where Swiss women were only granted the right to vote in Federal elections in 1971. It took another 20 years and a Supreme Court decision for the last Swiss canton to grant women the right to vote on local issues. This rate of progress extends to other legal rights and protections. For example, marital rape in Switzerland was only criminalised in 1985. It was not until 2002 that Switzerland granted women the right to abortion, and maternity leave was not federally mandated until 2005. In fact, it was only in September 2020 that paternity leave in Switzerland was extended from one day to two weeks.
A related challenge for Swiss women has been obtaining their financial independence. Limited and expensive childcare options mean that many women drop out of the workforce once they start a family. Even when women stay employed, they are far more likely than men to reduce to part-time work. This drop in income has major implications, as current statistics estimate that one in eight Swiss women live below the poverty line. This income gap follows women into retirement, for whom pensions are 37 per cent lower than men’s.[1]
Perhaps the starkest indication of how the lack of gender equality has impacted Swiss society is the issue of violence. A dependent economic status makes it more likely that women stay in abusive relationships. Indeed, Switzerland has the highest reported cases of domestic violence of any western European country. A staggering 64 per cent of all murders committed in the country result from domestic violence.[2] During the Covid-19 crisis, levels of domestic violence increased, with many shelters reporting an increased demand for services.
Helvetia is calling – Swiss women’s movement
Despite these challenges, women in Switzerland have long been fighting for their rights and have made important gains in recent years. In 1991, tired of the “snail’s pace” of progress on gender equality, 500,000 Swiss women organised a national strike. Chief among their demands was pay equity. Nearly 30 years later in 2019, when parliament again failed to pass an equal pay law, hundreds of thousands of Swiss women again took to the streets in protest demanding “higher pay, greater equality, and more respect.”
In addition, over the years there have been far fewer women than men elected to the Swiss Parliament. “Until 2019, more men named Hans had served in the Swiss Parliament than women,” said Sophie Achermann, director of alliance F, the largest and oldest umbrella organisation for women in Switzerland. “We can and must do better.” And indeed, their calls were answered.
Oak’s Issues Affecting Women Programme has been supporting Swiss women’s organisations since its first grant in 2004.
In 2019, for the first time in its history, more women were elected to the Swiss Parliament than men. Today, women make up 42 per cent of the Federal Parliament. Watch the video above, made by our partner alliance F, called “Helvetia is calling”.
In Switzerland, there is clear momentum and an opportunity to address many of the systemic issues that have prevented women from attaining their full and equal rights. These include: updating the tax code so that married women are not being unfairly taxed; providing affordable universal childcare solutions for working families; and expanding services across the country so that all women experiencing violence have access to quality support. There is also the need to upend the status quo and challenge social norms to promote a more just and equal society.
Issues Affecting Women Programme (IAWP) grant-making in Switzerland
The IAWP has been supporting Swiss women’s organisations since its first grant in 2004, which was in support of FIZ in Zurich, a not-for-profit organisation that provides specialised services to victims of trafficking.
Since then, the programme has expanded its support to nine other organisations across the country to: support domestic violence services, including psychological violence; address trafficking and exploitation; support migrant women to overcome the additional barriers they face in accessing services and understand their rights; and strengthen women’s movement building. Hear from some of the female activists and organisations in Switzerland who are working to raise awareness about these issues and combat some of the challenges faced by women by watching the following video.
In 2020, we decided to refresh our strategy in order to be more responsive to the needs of women and to the opportunities on the horizon. “The Swiss Women’s Movement has really taken off in recent years and we have the chance to transform the snail into a cheetah,” says Katharina Samara-Wickrama, director of the IAWP.
The IAWP’s new strategy will put movement building at the heart of our work in Switzerland. As one of the few foundations focusing on movement building in the country, Oak Foundation can play a unique role in supporting grassroot organisations to connect, mobilise, create, and share knowledge.
The programme is planning to further support advocacy and lobbying efforts in order to disrupt the status quo, create systemic change, and improve the legal frameworks that protect and advance women’s rights. The IAWP is also planning to expand its support to organisations working to end domestic violence in Switzerland, with a specific focus on migrant women. This will build on the existing portfolio on domestic violence and expand our support to other French-speaking cantons where services are not available.
You can stay up to date about the new programme strategy on our website.
[1] Caritas Switzerland, Switzerland has not been able to reduce its poverty, https://www.caritas.ch/en/news/switzerland-has-not-been-able-toreduce-its-poverty.html (Accessed27-01-2021)
[2] Swiss Federal Statistic Office, Domestic violence: Share of domestic violence in violence registered by the police, https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/crime-criminaljustice.assetdetail.14667307.html (Accessed 27-01-2021)