LAUSANNE/ZURICH: Three decades on, Swiss women strike again for equality. Women from across Switzerland take to the streets again Friday for a nationwide strike aimed at highlighting the country’s poor record on gender equality.
This is the major strike involving women exclusively twenty-eight years after staging a historic walkout. ‘History proves them right’.
Friday’s event reminded a strike in 1991, five years before the Gender Equality Act came into force. That Act banned workplace discrimination and sexual harassment and protected women from bias or dismissal over pregnancy, marital status, or gender.
However, women still earn less than men, face routine questioning of their competence, and encounter condescension and paternalism on the job, protesters say Swiss women earn roughly 20% less than men.
While that is an improvement from about a third less in 1991, the discrimination gap — meaning differences that cannot be explained by rank or role — has actually worsened since 2000, government data show. (Agencies)
Comment