The Evolution of Women's Political Power in Switzerland

Full Transcript:

Introduction:

Hello and welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast, where it is my job to discuss democratic institutions.

Women in Switzerland lacked direct political power until 1971. Up until then women didn’t have the right to vote and the right to be elected, despite efforts to introduce women’s suffrage that had started already a hundred years earlier, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Yet, once full political rights were obtained, women used the available political instruments and power with strategy and determination.

With Marlène Gerber, I discuss the evolution of women’s political power in Switzerland. She outlines the milestones on this long journey to political equality. One question is why it took Switzerland so long to introduce women’s suffrage compared to many other countries. We discuss this and many other developments around women’s participation in Swiss politics.

Marlène Gerber is Deputy Director of the Année Politique Suisse, the Yearbook of Swiss Politics, at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Bern. She finished her PhD thesis on the potential for deliberation among EU citizens in 2013, based on a project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. 

I am your host, Stephan Kyburz, and this is the twentieth episode of The Rules of the Game podcast. I am a political economist with a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. And I previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Global Development.

You find a full transcript of the conversation on my website rulesofthegame.blog. I would like to receive your feedback, so just send me an email to stephan.kyburz@gmail.com, and please leave a review on your preferred platform and share this episode with friends and colleagues.  

Now please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Marlène Gerber

Interview:

Stephan Kyburz: Marlène Gerber, welcome to the rules of the game podcast. It’s great to have you on the show. 

Marlène Gerber: Thanks for having me.

Stephan Kyburz: My first question, as always, is what is your first memory of democracy?

Marlène Gerber: That’s a good question, and the answer that comes to my mind is probably, not actually my first memory that I experienced but the memory that stuck in my mind, is the first time I was actually allowed to vote and this was at the national elections in October 2003 and this was actually… I have to out myself. It’s not a very glorious moment of my political past because at that time I was not really particularly interested yet in politics, that came then a little later. Was also a bit difficult for me to make up my mind. I really had the impression I have to study all these leaflets of all the parties in order to find, really, the candidates that are most closely to my opinion, as far as I had it then so I actually postponed the vote, until the very last moment and that’s when I found myself lying on the beach in Tunisia and around me all the leaflets spread and I was dutifully reading every single word of it and so at that time I felt like a duty to vote, for me. And of course that then changed quickly and I realized how much of a right it actually is and how privileged I am also to have this ability to vote on so many different issues in Switzerland because of this extensive form of direct democratic participation. And this is also how I became more and more interested in these issues.

Stephan Kyburz: But it sounds like you took your right and your responsibility to take part in democracy still quite seriously, in the early years, that’s probably already kind of an indication that you later on started  to do research.

Intermezzo

Stephan Kyburz: Today we want to talk about the introduction of women’s suffrage in Switzerland and more generally also about the evolution of women’s political power in Switzerland and also my personal relationship to that is that my mother, actually, when she turned 20 didn’t yet have the the right to vote and the right to be elected and and that was quite a frustration for her, even though she got it like very soon after, like a year after. That was 1971, when the woman’s suffrage was approved through a public vote. We want to discuss this today in this episode because in the development of the swiss democracy, it was really important… a very important moment and it led to, obviously, the inclusion of almost half of the population in the democracy and we could even discuss whether we can call Switzerland a democracy before that, right? It was really restricted to the male population. So what do you see as the main event regarding the introduction of women’s suffrage in Switzerland?

Marlène Gerber: Yeah, of course there are several. You just mentioned now, the event that finally led to the introduction of female suffrage in 1971 and before there are also many interesting instances. So yeah, it sounds like the fight in Switzerland started late but this is not the case. So there were already before the 20th century, women movements formed in order to demand that right in Switzerland also. And right after World War I there were also two parliamentarians who submitted proposals demanding to introduce women’s suffrage. However, the parliament passed them only in a less binding form, as a postulate, and the federal council actually never reacted to them by presenting a proposal or similar. So this is maybe one of the events where you can see that there were demands early on but they were not really taken up by politicians. There are other events later on, in 1957 there was a vote on extending the civil defense obligation to women, so women were concerned with this voting proposal but couldn’t actually give their opinion about it. 

Stephan Kyburz: So that… just to clarify for the audience, men in Switzerland have to do a military service. So it’s an obligation to do the military service and this was a discussion to kind of extend a service… more a civil service to women, also, right? Also as a consequence of the cold war I think. Is that right?

Marlène Gerber: Yes, so this was really also the obligation, the duty for women to introduce them for civil defense.

Stephan Kyburz: And then the argument was really… Okay, you know, there is a responsibility or this obligation for women to do the service but they can’t even vote right? That was really kind of the trigger that reignited the discussion.

Marlène Gerber: That’s true, exactly so women said: why should we have more duties but still no rights? Exactly. And also some municipalities, they saw it a bit that way. So they said: okay, women, they are strongly affected by this reform so let them have a vote on it and they actually allowed women to vote. They presented two separate palette boxes because they, maybe, already knew that the government would intervene but still they, as a sign of including women in politics, they allowed it for them to go to the polls. And an argument why they did that was that they just interpreted the constitution, a little different so their argument went that while with the designation of schweizer, so the male form of Swiss Citizen, in other parts of the constitution women or swiss women were also included. So why shouldn’t this be the case in the paragraph on the voting right? This was the argument until… Yeah, that’s how they legitimize this decision. But of course the cantons, the federal council later on annulled the women’s votes. But this again raised the discussion on the introduction of women’s suffrage and it also shows that there were attempts in Switzerland to introduce women’s suffrage by circumventing a direct democratic vote on it because there was this fear that this will not be accepted by the male citizens.

Stephan Kyburz: Also the circumvention there was that they tried to just reinterpret the constitution instead of changing the constitution.

Marlène Gerber: Exactly because changing the constitution would mean that there is an obligatory, mandatory referendum, so that male Swiss citizens would need to vote on it and that the majority of cantons need to approve it.

Stephan Kyburz: Yes, and that was also really a high hurdle in Switzerland, right? While in other countries, usually the parliament decided on women’s suffrage, in Switzerland, the male population had to approve it. And since Switzerland is ,in fact, a very conservative country in many ways, this was a high hurdle and that’s why they tried to go around it.

Marlène Gerber: Yes, that’s right, exactly.

Stephan Kyburz: So that was in 1957, with this Swiss municipality that allowed their women to actually vote, and then only two years later there was actually the first popular vote.

Marlène Gerber: Yeah, it is actually also connected to this proposal on civil defense obligation, because this put pressure on the federal council to present the proposal for the introduction of women’s suffrage. So this was the context, that’s how this happened, but there is also the suspicion that the parliament only waived the bills through because it was fairly searching that it wouldn’t find the majority among the male voting population because with the exception of the Social Democrats who recommended to vote yes, the other and major parties decided, either not to give a voting recommendation or in the case of the Swiss People’s Party, they rejected it. And this then also proved to be right at the vote. Actually only 1 in 3 swiss men and 3 french cantons voted yes, and the rest refused it. And then later on, the rejection at the ballot was actually used to legitimize that Switzerland still refrains from introducing women’s suffrage. This also shows that direct democracy can exert a breaking effect so to say on certain innovations.

Stephan Kyburz: So the decision by the male population was used to re-emphasize that, no, Switzerland doesn’t need women’s suffrage right? You often hear this after public votes that… this is kind of almost a definite decision that now we have seen what’s the result and we’re not going to argue around it anymore. But then at the Cantonal level there were new attempts, right? To introduce women’s suffrage and the first one was the canton of Vaud who approved women’s suffrage in 1959 and then some other cantons followed. And that was also, again, the federal structure of Switzerland, that was quite important in bringing about these changes at the lower level and also that people could see how it is implemented etc… right?

Marlène Gerber: Yes, right. That is also the argument of many political actors. First they said we should actually start at the local levels to introduce female suffrage and see how it goes and then later on extend it to the national level. So you could also say this maybe also kind of an excuse so it does push for the cantons and the municipalities to act first, on the other hand you can also say probably the cantons also have waited for a sign from the national level in order to become active. So there’s a bit of both, I guess, because then when they saw that the second proposal that actually was also successful, had chances to be successful, then the cantons also started to act immediately, most of them at least.

Stephan Kyburz: And that also then put more pressure at the national level, again, which led up to the decision in 1971 to finally introduce women’s suffrage across Switzerland at the national level. What was kind of the pre-story to that decision? You know how that pressure was built and why was it finally a yes.

Marlène Gerber: I’d say the main reason was, maybe not even the cantons that put much pressure because there were only a handful of cantons who had managed to introduce cantonal women’s suffrage. But actually that the main pressing factor was the very discussions on the ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights and so there was really an external pressure because in order to ratify them, the federal council intended to ratify it only with the reservation regarding the non-existent women suffrage and this really strongly radicalized women and they opposed and they demanded the immediate introduction of women’s suffrage so they said: that’s not an option, you need to have women suffrage first and then we can fully ratify that the convention. So this was actually the event I’d say that really changed a lot. It’s also impressive how many people went to the streets and so there was a lot of civil pressure then also around because of this discussion regarding the European Convention on Human Rights. Then also maybe time changed. So the economic integration of women was very developed. There was a general change going on between generations that might also have helped that. Then in the end it got accepted. So at least 2 out of 3 men this time said yes. Those might have been the reasons.

Stephan Kyburz: So it was one third of men who changed. I mean these were obviously not the same men or only party. 

Marlène Gerber: Yeah, but it doubled. The acceptance rates doubled.

Stephan Kyburz: So it was approved by around 65 or 66% of men. So  just to recap, also going back again. I mean, you know, the pressures were or the discussions were there very early on already in the 19th century, so it was already in 1868 and in Zurich for example, there was pressure to change the constitution of Zurich because of the federal structure. That was essentially a possibility to introduce women’s suffrage. And then women’s associations were really strong in pushing for that, but just because the hurdle of approval by the male population was quite high, it took so long. And two institutions, I think, that maybe have influenced that, which is not an excuse but may explain why it took so long was, on the one side direct democracy, as we said, because a lot of power was already nested within the male population in that sense. So the power, political power, was already quite distributed across the population.And then the second one was proportional representation that was introduced in 1919, which was again a big step in including political parties, political groups in the political decision-making process. So this inclusion of these groups and these really powerful tools, they might have slowed the whole process down. And obviously then,as I said already, the male population had to approve it. This was really unique, right? In an international comparison.

Marlène Gerber: Yes, quite. I think there was one other country like Lichtenstein who voted on women’s suffrage or where the men voted on it. 

Stephan Kyburz: Also quite late, even later.

Marlène Gerber: Even later than Switzerland, yes. In 1984 I think… Yeah, exactly. But so yes Switzerland was a special case. I would also maybe like to add a surge institutional mechanism that is maybe the constellation of the government or how it was before and in Switzerland, I mean it’s quite fixed so we have since 1959, we have this magic formula which was established that institutionalized the power sharing between the four major parties, and this was actually also the point where, for example, the Social Democrats actually entered. From then on they were constantly in the government with two seats.

Stephan Kyburz: Just to quickly explain, for the audience, that the Swiss Federal Council is constituted of seven members that formed the government and after that magic formula, as we call it, the four major parties were represented in the Federal Council in a stable composition, essentially. So three parties had two seats and one party had one seat, just to give the context. 

Marlène Gerber: Exactly. So there was never, for example, the case that the Social Democrats were in the majority or something like that. So the Social Democrats were like the party list in Switzerland, but I think also elsewhere, who were most favorable to the introduction of women’s suffrage. So they need to have allies in order to actually be able to to make a proposal to the parliament and so this was also a factor where Swiss institutions may have acted a bit against an early introduction of female suffrage. We can go to the other two factors that you said because I think they’re… and of course they are very important. Yes, proportional representation or the inclusion of various groups that came with it of course that might have been also a factor. This is actually also a factor if you look at the Federal Council who brought forward, and that speaks against introduction of female quotas or something like that because, as you said, there are 7 members and the constitution prescribes that it has to be, so regional groups have to be appropriately represented and linguistic groups have to be appropriately represented so there was just the argument that there’s no more room to include another group, appropriately all the time. So that’s the argument. That’s maybe also linked a bit to this idea of proportional representation. And then with regard to direct democracy I think it even accelerated a two fold influence. So the first is what we already discussed before. So the electorate was an additional veto player and it played its roles as we have seen in the late 50s. And the second factor linked to direct democracy is more about the idea that Switzerland is this special case. So the very fact that Switzerland had this extensive direct democratic rights for Swiss men, was used to legitimize the lack of women’s suffrage. For example, the Federal Council once said that the depth of direct democracy actually makes up for the lack of breadth. So that was one reason to justify why we keep it a bit more restricted and then many believed that whether women were in fact, interested enough to vote on so many different issues. Looking at their role back then probably did not concern their daily lives or because they were much more kept in the domestic private lives.

Stephan Kyburz: So it was really the view that politics was a male game right? That the men were more interested, or whatever, you know, than women.

Marlène Gerber: Exactly and that they were in the public life. They actually experienced this so they were capable of forming these decisions. And there was also the idea that women have their domestic duties and they won’t be able to perform or are going to neglect their domestic duties if they also have to be engaged with politics and in complex issues etc. 

Stephan Kyburz: That’s the very conservative argument, the easy argument. 

Marlène Gerber: Yeah but it was brought up quite often. 

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, and also we have to say that there were also women’s associations that were against the introduction of women’s suffrage right? To be transparent. 

Marlène Gerber: Yeah, that’s an important point, exactly. That’s true.

Stephan Kyburz: These institutional hurdles, they were really important in the sense that just made it harder to pass this legislation because if we look at other countries in Europe, for example, or around the world that introduced women’s suffrage earlier, it was usually more an elite decision or a political decision in parliament. So often this was actually around World War I when women were way more involved in actually the whole military mobilization and the social services that they provided and this was in many countries the reason why the deal… The kind of political deal was: Okay, we give women vote, kind of as…almost as a transaction in response to women actually providing a lot of support in production, in social services, in society during World War I. At least that’s probably a very rough summary of the historic events in other countries, right? 

Marlène Gerber: Yeah, that’s right. But still Switzerland was less affected, of course, by World War I than other counties and that’s also a reason for some countries to introduce the women’s suffrage earlier and probably not only as a reward for them due to their engagement and during the years of war but maybe also because men then realized that things actually do not change massively when women were leaving their houses and entering the public sphere. So maybe there was also the fear that the politics would actually change fundamentally when women had the right to vote and it also diminished in those countries that made this experience.

Stephan Kyburz: Also we may add here that in 1918, Switzerland had a huge general strike. So people from all industries were on the streets and two of the main demands were actually… One was proportional representation and the other one was actually women’s suffrage. And in the end proportional representation was finally implemented but not women’s suffrage. But that was also a point in time when this social push for inclusion of women in politics was at the crossroads, I would say. 

Intermezzo

Stephan Kyburz: Now I’d like to talk more about the post 1971 period when women actually got the right to vote. They were soon included obviously in the elections, in participation. So what were kind of how did women react to that newly acquired right to participate to vote and to be elected?

Marlène Gerber: You see that when women were allowed to vote, it seems like then a lot of energy became free for fighting for other gender equality issues. And then popular initiatives were launched in the early 70s, with quite radical demands for that time actually, so for example, they demanded paternal leave for nine months. Which is something we are still far, far away from it right now or there was the demand raised for legalizing abortion. And yeah, of course they were not directly adopted but still from this point on when we had the right to vote and the debate, at least, could be launched about these issues. Before you can really rarely see that such issues have been part of parliamentary discussions. So here you can really see a difference when women entered the political sphere, these issues were also then on the table.

Stephan Kyburz: And you say these debates were mainly launched through direct democracy rather than through parliament or was it both?

Marlène Gerber: Both. You can also see looking at the parliamentary discussion that women started to launch motions and postulates for these issues so it was, I’d say it was both. But I think it’s interesting how much pressure these direct democratic initiatives could actually exert, already back then, on politics. So there was not this direct influence because the proposals were really rejected heavily, rejected at the ballots then. I meah, the population in Switzerland was still at that time rather conservative in their worldviews toward role models. But it helped to put pressure on parliamentary work. So there were counter proposals, raised proposals were taken up partially, which actually in the end had an influence also so this is very interesting I think.

Stephan Kyburz: And how did women’s representation in parliament… How did that develop?

Marlène Gerber: In the national council where we have the proportional representation system it developed slowly but steadily. I’d say until the last National elections where we had quite a steep increase. So now we are at 40% and representation of women in the national council which is also in European terms not so bad or actually quite good. But before it was really a slow and steady increase. And in the council of states it was even slower. Maybe also because of the different electoral systems. So there we have for most cantons a majority vote and only two seats per canton and there we are now at 25% so 1 in 4 members of this council of states is female and we had even similar figures already at the beginning of the millennium. But then it went down again. So there is not this slow and steady increase. So it’s a bit more up and down.

Stephan Kyburz: But at least at the government level, the Federal Council saw, already a majority of women right? That was also an important step, I think. And also very symbolic that a majority of women were leading for a certain time period the Swiss government. .

Marlène Gerber: Yeah, that happened once, exactly.For one or two years we had this majority of women so 4 women, 3 men and now we’re back at 3. Yes, until, I’d say the middle of  2005 or something, we have at least 2 or mostly 3 female federal counselors. That’s true, and the first female counselor was elected in 1984 so also there we see that it took of course more time than the entrance to the national council.

Stephan Kyburz: So from your perspective, you know, we are now in the national council. So that’s the main chamber we are at 40%. I guess if we had, like, almost perfect representation we should be around 50%. Do you think we should just be more patient and wait until actually we get even higher or do you see any institutional changes that could be implemented that might, you know, get us there earlier.

Marlène Gerber: Yeah, that’s all very difficult to tell because of course time always is or was a factor for women. They had to be patient and maybe they still have. But yes, there were some institutional changes that have been discussed. For some time the discussion for the introduction of quota was there, not only for the national council but also for other institutions but actually none of these proposals found the majority neither in parliament nor at the ballot. These discussions I feel like they decreased a bit lately and proposals rather aim at force fostering their reconciliation between family career and parliamentary mandate in order to motivate more women to run for the office. And at least for the national council, the problem actually lies at this point. So the chances to be elected are now, it’s not for a solemn case but at least for some years now, the chances to be elected are the same for women and men. So the problem is also that not enough women are asked  to put their candidature or um that they don’t want to…

Stephan Kyburz: To run for office.

Marlène Gerber: Exactly so this might probably help increase their reconciliation between family career and parliamentary mandate to motivate more women to run for office. And there are several proposals and discussions. So for example some cantons also notice this institutional rule already. They have substitutes who are able to to replace the Parliamentarian and when she’s not able to attend, for example, for maternity reasons. There are also proposals who demand more family friendly meeting rhythms or enhance financial support in order to hire someone to assist them in preparing their emotions and postulates and so on.

Stephan Kyburz: And also I remember, like, in the last election of 2019, there was a big push by the women’s association to put women higher on the lists of the parties and just for more women to actually run for office and, I think, this was quite effective, actually.

Marlène Gerber: Exactly yeah, you can really see this in numbers. That’s why we are now at 40% so where it was really a steady and slow increase and, I think, also that the women strike and then all this discussion and the women’s organization that really helped in pushing female candidates as they are now. 

Intermezzo

Stephan Kyburz: For people who want to read up on some of these developments, do you have any recommendations of books or papers?

Marlène Gerber: There are so many, it’s difficult to find but also in the last year because of the 50th anniversary of women’s suffrage there were so many new publications, some also with portraits on women or really engaging with the history of the movement and, I think, that some things we discuss today are also in the book of Werner Seitz. It’s in german only. But after “ Wartebank geschoben” it’s called in german and “to be placed on the waiting bench” or.

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, or queuing up. Essentially.

Marlène Gerber: Queuing up probably is easier, exactly. and yeah, where he really shows this history and also the several attempts of introducing women’s suffrage in the parliament, in the cantons, but also outside. But actually that book stuck in my mind, it’s not a political science book but I think it really shows quite nicely the different worlds that Switzerland combined. So that’s one. It’s written by the historian Wilfried Meichtry and it’s called “Verliebte Feinde” so “enemies in love” and sounds like a love story, but it’s of course far more than that, because it did include the intertwined biographies of two people that were very important in Switzerland for the fight for women’s suffrage, gender equality between the sexes and one is the very progressive and urban woman, Iris von Roten who published slightly before the first vote on female suffrage, and for Swiss standards a quite radical analysis on the situation of women and rather demanded full gender equality and sexual self-determination and so on. And there is her husband Peter von Roten, he originates from the conservative canton Valais and then he became a member of the national council for the catholic conservative party. So the two really had very different backgrounds and world views. She then actually influenced his stance towards women’s suffrage greatly and he also launched demands in parliament for the introduction of female suffrage. Of course he was the only one from his party. But yeah I really think that the book manages to show in a very impressive way the fight for equality in Switzerland and the fights between themselves and also with others and when these opposing worldviews collide. Another book I will now recommend without actually having read it yet, but it is very high on my reading list. So I should definitely read it because it’s from Brigitte Studer and Judith Wyttenbach on women’s suffrage. And it’s on the historical and legal development in Switzerland and that actually then led to the introduction of women’s suffrage. They also talk a lot about the question of why it took so long to introduce women’s suffrage in Switzerland in the end. Then another publication from last year I can also recommend is the one by… It’s edited by Denise Schmid and it’s a compact publication on the question, written a bit in a sadistic form and on what happened after women were granted their political rights. So how actually the fight for gender equality developed, who raised which issues and how or whether they were successful and it also taps into the role of the women’s movement. Also I would definitely recommend… Maybe I should also make a bit of promotion for our book. I have a publication with a colleague of mine that also came out last year and it also looks at what happens afterwards. So after women were granted the right to vote. We looked at a lot of parliamentary discussions on several topics: on social security and discussions or legalizing abortion, how women are integrated in the economic life and so on. But very closely looks at the Parliamentarian discussions. It also taps into the success of these issues.

Stephan Kyburz: Sounds fascinating and thanks for sharing these recommendations and if any others come up I’ll just put them in the show notes. Of course. So Marlène Gerber, thanks a lot for taking the time to be a guest on the podcast and sharing your views, some of your research and it has really been a pleasure and an insightful discussion. Thank you so much. 

Marlène Gerber: Thanks, Very much to you. 

Extro: 

Thanks for listening to this episode. Feel free to reach out to me with suggestions for guests I could invite on the show or any other f eedback at stephan.kyburz@gmail.com. Take care.