By Rosa Favre
The 2019 Switzerland womens strike saw the biggest mobilisation to date with half a million participants. The 2023 strike was not as successful but, even so, 300,000 were on the streets on 14 June. According to union officials, the strike was still a crowning success, since it was more radical than 2019 and could still mobilise on such a scale, despite frontal attacks by the bourgeoisie that demonised the movement. To accept that, however, would be to think that the masses of working women who were present in 2019 have somehow become less radical in 2023. That would be ridiculous.
So, if women felt abandoned by men, frustrated by the misogynistic wave they were facing, and aware of the burden placed on their shoulders during the Covid-19 crisis, why didn’t they join the movement on the streets in equal or greater numbers?
Women in the francophone region did strike in similar numbers to 2019 but in German-speaking Switzerland, the movement did lose its fighting power. This is because, despite coordination at the national level, each cantonal section of the trade unions mobilised separately. As a result, everything depended on local activists and there were many places and sectors of the economy where there was almost no agitation and little protection against threats of dismissal against strikers.
The 2023 strike was largely a strike of youth and students. Since young people have very little experience in the workplace, most of the banners carried slogans against sexualised violence, sexual liberation and for the emancipation of queer youth, whether sexual or regarding gender identity. A lot of the slogans denounced everyday sexism or unwanted sexual comments. However, almost none of them addressed the most important event of the year: the setback of women’s rights in the form of the increase in the retirement age. This has made the strike largely petty bourgeois in nature, a setback from 2019.
Problems of the strike
The women’s strike has lost class consciousness and the existing leadership of the movement is responsible for this. In fact, it consists of the trade unions, which in turn are largely run by social democratic bureaucrats who benefit from industrial peace.
An exception in the organisation of the strike is SolidaritéS, a party that comes from the Trotskyist tradition and is an observer of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International (USFI). It also focused on LGBT+ issues and presented its intersectional vision to the trade unions. But, at the same time, it adapted to the bureaucracy and made concessions over the social and economic demands of the strike, so as not to jeopardise its own positions in the apparatus.
On the other hand, we cannot expect that a strike that achieves nothing and only happens sporadically over the years will be able to maintain its mobilising potential in the working class. To fan the flames of the class struggle, it is not enough for a social movement to stand still. It must grow and secure new achievements. The successful years were linked to victorious labour struggles, international movements with clear demands (such as the #MeToo movement) and opposition to attacks on retirement provision. There were also noticeable effects on elections and surrounding countries after the strikes. In 2023, women suffered a defeat at the ballot box because the Swiss People’s Party won, giving no reason to participate in a strike, which was previously seen as something of a celebration. And only recently, the Federal Supreme Court ruled that a mitigation of the sentence is appropriate for ‘short’ rapes!
Involvement
In order to maintain itself during a period of retreat, the movement must recognise two lessons:
1. It is necessary to involve more and different sectors of the economy in the strikes, by building action and strike committees.
2. The actions must be prepared and planned further in advance.
For this, the movement must not oppose actions lasting several days (as was done in 2019 by the leadership of SolidaritéS) and it must also break with the reactionary idea of industrial peace. In the longer term, this would open up the potential for a general strike.
Involving new sectors also means involving men in the struggle. Men were the big absentees in the strikes of 2019 and 2023. This is symptomatic of a programme that does not seek to build a unity of struggle among workers, and of grassroots organisations that focus too much on one of the genders. The trade unions therefore need a Marxist perspective that sees equal potential in women and men as far as the fight for equality under labour law is concerned. Of course, it is possible that only women are involved in strikes. This was also the case in the first days of the 1917 February Revolution. But Russian women would never have been able to fight for their political rights if they had not fought together with men. It is therefore indispensable for future actions to involve working men.
We also have to take note of major differences between the French-speaking and German-speaking regions of Switzerland. In the former, radical left-wing organisations such as SolidaritéS had a great influence on the course of events. This was not the case in the latter. The Movement for Socialism (FSO, which is also close to the USFI and is much stronger in the German-speaking cities of Zurich and Basel) did not want to invest as much time in building the women’s strike as SolidaritéS. As a result, the organisers were more combative in the French-speaking part, while in German-speaking Switzerland, social democrats were largely at the head of organising the strike.
Bureaucracy and class peace
Leadership of the strikes by the trade union bureaucracy, which has arguably betrayed the Swiss working class the most, is a central obstacle to the women’s strike. The bureaucracy of the trade unions supports the so-called ‘labour peace’, an agreement concluded with the employers’ associations in 1937 that commits the trade unions to class collaboration and effectively prohibits the right to strike. The Swiss proletariat has been disarmed, having lost its most powerful weapon against the bourgeoisie. We must win that back at all costs. This is the primary struggle that all class struggle forces in the trade unions must wage.
At the same time, the trade union leadership is closely linked to the Socialist Party. This is another reason why the demands of the women’s strike start from the assumption of class collaboration. For example, they call for the creation of committees to supervise equal pay in companies but they say nothing about who sits on such committees, whether they should be organs of workers’ control or social partnership.
There is another element of activist culture that needs to be changed: we need to reject bourgeois federalism, which paralyses our struggle. The federal structure allows individual trade union and SP bureaucrats to sabotage a nationwide struggle for liberation at a lower level if they prioritise labour peace rather than the needs of grassroots trade unionists. All activists must stand firmly together and overcome the chauvinism of their time and place, whether that is cantonal, national, ethnic, male or cisheterosexual. Trade union and SP bureaucrats who do not respect national decisions should be replaced—through democratically organised elections within the trade unions or the movement as a whole.
Of course, this discussion ties in with the creation of a body that can mobilise workers at the national level. That would be essential for a general strike. It is therefore important to build an organisation that is not dismantled after every strike, but forms a permanent structure. This will allow for the involvement of women in a consistent way, and hopefully lead to expansion into industries where women are dominant, and also progressively increase male participation.
A chauvinist attitude can also be found in the rejection of 8 March (International Women’s Day) as a strike day. In Switzerland, we often prefer to take pride in national achievements, rather than internationalist and communist history. This is another element which shows the reformist tendency and direction of the movement, which prefers to boast of concessions made 40 years too late, rather than the glorious victory of the women of Petrograd over the tsarist repression on 8 March 8.
Current attacks
We were forced to listen to bourgeois politicians telling us we had to work one year more when the retirement age was raised from 64 to 65 because it is 65 for men. As a consequence, the bourgeoisie’s malignant view of equality between the sexes means even more unpaid work. In fact, in 2016, it was estimated that women do free work worth CHF 247 billion, a third of Switzerland’s GDP.
The downplaying of the actual roots of inequality is clear to proletarian women: inequality in the division of reproductive labour, sexualised violence, etc. This is also why women voted massively against raising the retirement age. But the Swiss men who voted were imbued with a rare machismo.
On September 25, 2022, 50.57% voted for its increase for women from 64 to 65 years. In the end, it was a defeat for the entire working class. This year, the bourgeoisie will let us vote on whether to raise it to 66 or even higher—in the name of civil equality for women and men of course. In the coming struggle against the raising of the retirement age, the women’s strike will be an indispensable tool that can build solidarity between the sexes and thus be a weapon against the capitalist offensive on the living conditions of the proletariat. It is essential to give new life to this movement.
The creation of a fighting body that goes beyond the cantonal borders is essential for the success of the struggle for individual reforms. To free ourselves from sexist violence and oppression, we must fight together with women, minorities, and men around the world. Solidarity and internationalism is our motto!
We think the following demands should be discussed in the movement in order to advance the debate in Switzerland about a programme of women’s and LGBT+ liberation. However, they do not yet represent the full programme:
1. First of all, we must defend the retirement age of women. The increase to 65 is not only a frontal attack on women’s living standards, but also a battering ram against the working conditions of the entire working class, led by the instrumentalisation of sexism. The workers’ movement, together with the women’s strike, must launch a militant campaign to defend the retirement age. This blow against the offensive of the bourgeoisie must go further than the simple defence of past gains of the working class. Workers’ productivity has risen steadily, but so has the retirement age. What kind of society has to increase both? Furthermore, we demand a national pension independent of capital, with full benefits and pensions for part-time work.
2. We cannot rely on benevolent capitalists or male partners, nor can we trust the state to accurately evaluate and value this vital work, which is primarily carried out by multiply marginalised people. Therefore, we must radically reduce working hours (7-hour day, 4 days a week) with no loss of pay and demand parental leave that does not discriminate against women in the workplace. Only the joint struggle of the working class against capitalism and the state can enforce these demands. And only under a democratically planned economy can reproductive work and its unequal distribution be tackled in the long term. Social and environmental crises such as Covid or climate change will only increase the need for reproductive work. We must fight to ensure that these crises are not blamed on women, LGBT+ and people of colour.
We demand that reproductive work be socially organised instead of being loaded onto the nuclear family. We want to establish committees in the workplaces that organise the work of raising children (and other reproductive work that happens in the family unit, such as caring for elderly parents or sick relatives) publicly, under the control of the working class. The existing private housework must be divided equally among the sexes.
4. It is necessary for all workers to democratically decide which industries are desirable for the good of all, and which belong in the dustbin of history. We want more reproductive work of better quality, which means—something has to be given up. We don’t care about the car or oil industry. We don’t want fast fashion or other consumer mania. The decision on which industries should be kept alive must be decided democratically in factory and district committees.
5. We want delegates of women of the working class in bodies of workers’ control, which guarantee that equal pay exists in all companies, with self-determined criteria. Women are often paid less than men, whether for reasons of discrimination or for part-time work to provide for their families. Working women will not be told anything by bourgeois economists who want them to believe that their plight is a just and rational product of a ‘just’ and ‘rational’ society that oppresses them. On the contrary, working women are trying to understand the reasons for their hardship and are discovering the irrationality of class society and its patriarchal excesses-—and will radically oppose all those who take it for granted and as a necessity. Because that’s not it: just look how good it is for the men of the capitalist class! Similar methods and arguments can be repeated for people of colour and LGBT+ people.
6. We demand that companies that violate equality be expropriated and nationalised without compensation, under workers’ control.
7. We are in favour of women’s full self-determination over their bodies. They must not be exposed to sexist and sexualised violence, whether physical or verbal. They must be able to wear all the clothes they want—a skirt, hijab or mini-shorts—without having to endure sexist or condescending remarks. Women, trans people (and men too) deserve proper sex education, which includes not only heterosexual but also homosexual sex and transgender health. This also means an all-round transformation of health care. We need a single public health insurance fund that includes the unconditional right to abortion, menstrual products, contraception and gender-affirming care, as well as a mechanism to fight against sexism and racism in the health care system.
8. The police and military are known to be very sexist, racist and homophobic. These institutions are irredeemable. These are their characteristics under capitalism. Women must be oppressed in order to keep them in their role as unpaid and super-exploited workers. That’s why the police can’t take complaints of sexualised violence seriously, and invading armies rape women and their daughters. These institutions are rotten and must be completely abolished; starting by cutting their funding. We want to replace them with bodies of armed and organised workers: workers’ militias that enforce the rule of the proletariat and all marginalised groups, thus representing an open counter-power against the rule of the bourgeois police and army.
The struggle for a women’s strike, which becomes a full-scale political strike against pension reform and other demands, is an integral part of the class struggle. But in order to achieve such a perspective, in the trade unions and in the movement more generally, we must also advocate the building of a new revolutionary workers’ party as an alternative to reformism and bureaucracy, combining the struggle for women’s liberation with that for socialist revolution.
