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| Majlinda Sulejmani |
Women's engagement in Swiss politics
Fifty years have passed since women in Switzerland gained federal voting rights. Fifty years since eleven national councilors first entered parliament and took the oath.
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| Majlinda Sulejmani |
Yet even today, women represent a minority in almost all political decision-making bodies and Switzerland continues to fight for true equality in business and society.
The federal elections in 2019 clearly showed that the population wants to hear the voices of women. Women and men should make political decisions in equal parts. That is why alliance F, the Federation of Swiss Women Organizations, together with the Evangelical Women in Switzerland (EFS), the Swiss Federation of Farmers and Rural Women (SBLV), the Swiss Charitable Women Umbrella Association (SGF), the Swiss Catholic Federation of Women (SKF) and the Federal Commission on Women's Affairs (EKF) will host a women's session on October 29 and 30, 2021.
For two days in a row, 246 women from all regions of Switzerland will sit in the National Council room, discuss their most urgent concerns and deal with applications from specially formed commissions. Finally, they will submit their specific requests to Parliament and the Federal Council. The women's session thus comes as close as possible to a real parliamentary session - the results should be just as binding.
This gathering of Swiss women has a long tradition: the first women's session took place in 1991. Until 1996, women's associations regularly organized large congresses in which women wrote slogans and expressed their needs. The issues then were not so different from today: Equal pay for men and women was already on the agenda in Geneva in 1921.
