By Rosa Favre
In Switzerland, women’s rights have always been achieved a little later than in other European countries. We did not get the right to vote at the national level until 1971, while it was introduced in Germany and Austria in 1918 and in Italy in 1945. This is six years after even the USA generalised the right to vote without discrimination, i.e. finally allowed black women to vote.
Background
This Swiss delay can be explained by many complementary factors. During the imperialist wars, the warring countries had to employ masses of female labour to keep the economy running. Because of Swiss neutrality, there was not the same drafting of women into the workforce. The contradiction between their increased exploitation and the lack of civil rights thus entered the mass consciousness less and later in Switzerland and was not resolved. Another factor is that because of the country’s federal structure, many activists for women’s suffrage have focused on the cantonal level. For this reason, three cantons, all in French-speaking Switzerland (Vaud, Neuchâtel and Geneva), introduced women’s suffrage as early as 1960. However, six years had to pass before other cantons followed suit.
Similarly, equality between men and women was not enshrined in the Constitution until 14 June 1981. In neighbouring countries, this happened as early as 1946 (France) and 1949 (Germany). However, as is usually the case with such laws, they failed to actually be implemented. The most shocking thing is how some cantons managed to de facto ban women from voting until 1991. It was not until 20 years after the right to vote was won at the national level, and ten years after equality between the sexes was enshrined in law, that the Confederation forced its implementation in the canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden.
Origins of the strike
In 1991, ten years after the introduction of gender equality in the constitution, the Swiss Trade Union Confederation (SGB) organised the ‘Women’s Strike’ to mark the anniversary. The slogan was ‘Ten years of equality … on paper!’ The ineffectiveness of the authorities in implementing the law in concrete terms was condemned and some solutions were proposed: ban wage inequality, protect women from sexualised violence in the workplace, affordable childcare and force men to participate in reproductive work to the same extent as women do. Since the call for a women’s general strike went far beyond a simple parade during leisure time, it was vehemently opposed by bourgeois ideologues in the media and parliament. They described the action as ‘excessive’. One member of parliament even presumed to call it ‘stupid’. But it was not only men who were against a strike: liberal and conservative so-called feminists also had no solidarity or sympathy for the cause.
The reason for the successful mobilisation, which could only be trumped by two other actions in Swiss history, lies in the workers’ movement. The starting point was the strike of watch workers in Vallée de Joux, an enclosed high valley in the Jura, who wanted to stand up against the exorbitant wage differences between the sexes and were able to inspire various trade unionists for their cause, among them Christiane Brunner. The success of this was not only dependent on successful union mobilisation, but the movement took place in a particular international context, when large strikes were also taking place in America and Europe and the actions and ideas spread internationally.
14 June, 1991 still marks one of the greatest days for social movements in Switzerland. On that day, 100,000 women went on strike for equality between the sexes, and a total of 500,000 took part in one way or another. It was the largest work stoppage that Switzerland had seen since the general strike in 1918. The shock wave can still be felt in workers’ history today and the mere mention of the strike causes fear and terror in the bourgeoisie, although it was coordinated by the Social Democratic Party (SP) and the social democratic-led trade unions, which are also well embedded in the bourgeois system, and very few demands could be enforced immediately.
A critical balance sheet
Although the militant strike in 1991 opposed the bourgeois anti-strike dogma, only a few demands were formulated. While fighting for actual rights that the state claims to grant to an oppressed group is a great tactic for civil rights activists, it has its limitations. It is tailing capitalism on its own terrain.
A succinct argument is that capitalism is incapable of granting us the rights it promises us. In fact, gender oppression is woven into the basic functioning of the capitalist system, which cannot afford, for example, to wrest domestic work and thus women’s unpaid reproductive work from the private sphere. Therefore, although formal, legal equality of the sexes can be achieved under capitalism, it cannot achieve de facto equality. For an actual end to gender-specific oppression, for true equality, the capitalist mode of production must be overthrown altogether.
The demands of the 1991 strike were all good and important in terms of content, but not enough, and the organisers believed that demands for abortion rights and maternity leave were too ambitious. Also, no effort has been made to address the specific needs of people of colour or LGBT+ people. Their feminism was therefore not only reformist, but also exclusionary. It is therefore not surprising that some of the most prominent leaders of the 1991 strike, such as Martine Chaponnière, later became increasingly Islamophobic.
Reprint
In 2011, a new edition of the strike was initiated, but it suffered a sharp loss of fighting power. The women of the bourgeois parties, who had abhorred the idea of a strike in 1991, did now defend the necessity of a strike. This time, however, there were only a few thousand women on the streets.
In response to the #MeToo movement, the SGB decided in 2019 to organise a new version of the strike, again on 14 June. This was called both a ‘women’s strike’ and a ‘feminist strike’. In German-speaking Switzerland, it was largely known by the former name. This time, 500,000 people were on the streets. In contrast to 1991, the demands focused on intersectional feminism. Specific demands were made for racialised women as well as LGBT+ people. The call to organise this strike was born from the women’s assembly of the SGB, through the initiative of women from the Association of Public Service Personnel (VPOD). After a call via Facebook, about 200 women, not all of them unionised or otherwise organised, met in June 2018 to initiate the 2019 strike. They then built up structures for its organisation throughout Switzerland.
Finally, on the day of the strike, many spontaneous actions took place: manifestos were written and specific demands for certain sectors of the economy (especially in the public sector) were raised. Women who worked in the private sector generally had a harder time striking because of the even greater risk of repression by capital. But this did not stop women in the public sector from expressing solidarity and making demands for their sisters in the private sector. For example, employees and students of the University of Lausanne made demands for cleaning and cafeteria staff employed by private companies.
Consequences
Seeing such a mass of working women on the streets has been an inspiration to working women in other Western countries. The strike was in the news in the UK, Germany, Austria, the USA and other countries, always accompanied by a commentary on the story of the extraordinary day on which Swiss women went on strike.
As in Spain, these strikes were an example of how the struggle for women’s liberation can transcend the limits of petty bourgeois and bourgeois activism. In fact, the strike is entirely a form of struggle of the proletariat. Even if not every action so titled is really a strike, the actions in Switzerland were strongly linked to company actions and were under trade union guidance.
As already mentioned, bourgeois women oppose the use of the strike tactic. But these same women are not ashamed to use feminism as a tool to reinforce their dominance over working women. Above all, they fight for quotas in top and leadership positions and against everyday sexist acts, while the permanent structural oppression of women under capitalism remains untouched.
This liberal feminism pits men against women and in no way allows proletarian women to maintain control over their own emancipation. That is why it is rejected by most proletarian women. What the strikes in Switzerland and Spain have shown women all over the world is that there is a connection between the struggle for more women’s rights and the fight for better working conditions, in short, that the question of equality is also a class question.
Therefore, the 2019 strike was a real success, capable of mobilising working women. Therefore, it has earned the trust of workers and provided a platform for change. Logically, we should expect the movement to grow because of this. But the leading role of SP reformism and the trade union bureaucracy, as well as the influence of bourgeois and petty bourgeois feminism, would prove to be a barrier in the years that followed, leading to stagnation and setbacks for the movement.
