Women in Switzerland
| Women in society |
|---|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Women in Switzerland are women who live and are from Switzerland. Tradition dictates that the place of Swiss women is in the home in charge of housework and child care. Being in a society with strong patriarchal roots, Swiss tradition also places women under the authority of their fathers and their husbands.[3] Such adherence to tradition changed and improved when the women of Switzerland gained their right to vote at the federal level in February 7, 1971.[4] However despite of gaining status of having equal rights with men, some Swiss women still have to be able to attain education beyond the post-secondary level, thus they earn less money than men, and they occupy lower-level job positions.[3] According to swissinfo.ch in 2011, Switzerland's State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco) were encouraging business companies to "appoint more women to top-level positions". Those who are already working in business companies, according to same report, mentions that "women earn on average 20% less than men" in Switzerland, and the ratio was 6 out of 10 women were working part-time.[5]
Prominent Swiss women in the fields of business and law include Emilie Kempin-Spyri (1853–1901), the first woman to become a lawyer in the country,[4] and Isabelle Welton, the head of IBM Switzerland and one of few women in the country who are holding top-level positions in business firms.[6][7]
Politics
In 2010, The New York Times reported that women became the majority within the Swiss government, with 6 women holding ministerial positions.[8]
Non-sexist use of languages
The Federal Administration of Switzerland regularly uses three languages: German, French and Italian (Rhaeto-Romanic, or Romansh, is used less regularly). An article by Daniel Elmiger[9] states that, "the new Federal Language Law (Sprachengesetz, Loi sur les langues, Legge sulle lingue, Lescha da linguas) adopted in 2007 demands that official language use [for official texts] must be adequate, clear and intelligible as well as non-sexist. Non-sexist language has been required in the German section of the Federal Chancellery for about 15 years, whereas the French and Italian sections have shown little interest in modifying their use of language, sticking to a more traditional language use in which masculine terms are used both specifically as well as generically."[10]
See also
References
- ↑ "Table 4: Gender Inequality Index". United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
- ↑ "The Global Gender Gap Report 2013" (PDF). World Economic Forum. pp. 12–13.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Switzerland, everyculture.com
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 The right to vote, swissworld.org
- ↑ Wilton, Isabelle. Women still climbing to the top in business, swissinfo.ch, March 7, 2011
- ↑ Communication Styles in Switzerland, worldbusinessculture.com Quote: (...) "Women are making ever-deeper inroads into what was once a predominantly male-dominated world of Swiss business life. Although it is not too common to see women at the very top end of the management strata, the 'glass ceiling' is being slowly dismantled. " (...)
- ↑ Doing business in Switzerland, expatica.com Quote: (...) "In Swiss business culture, few women hold high-level positions" (...)
- ↑ Cumming-Bruce, Nick. Women Now a Majority in Swiss Government, The New York Times, September 22, 2010.
- ↑ "Dr. Daniel Elmiger: Maître d'enseignement et de recherche". Département de langue et de littérature allemandes, Université de Genève. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
- ↑ Elmiger, Daniel (February 2013). "The government in contact with its citizens: Translations of federal information in multilingual Swiss administration". Gender and Language (Equinox) 7 (1): 59–74. doi:10.1558/genl.v7i1.59.
External links
