Swiss women strike for more money, time and respect
bbc.comI see just two comments right now and I see a lot of cynism.
Things are better today than in the past thanks to people fighting for their and others rights. And the job is not finished.
Democracy is not something that happens once each four years. It's important to vote, but as important is to express your dissatisfaction with the wrongdoings of the system.
> Ms Born, who joined a newsroom staffed entirely by men in 1986, is quietly optimistic. "We've achieved some good things since 1991," she points out. "We have maternity leave now."
Parental leave seams such a natural right to have that it's strange that there exists any opposition to it. Mothers and fathers benefit from it. Fighting for women's rights is also figthing for a more just and balance society for everyone.
> Parental leave seams such a natural right to have that it's strange that there exists any opposition to it. Mothers and fathers benefit from it. Fighting for women's rights is also figthing for a more just and balance society for everyone.
Yet our government (I'm swiss) stubbornly refuses to introduce a paternity leave. This will hopefully change in the coming years because they will be forced to through an initiative (one collected enough signatures already and a vote will follow).
> Parental leave seams such a natural right to have that it's strange that there exists any opposition to it.
There's opposition to it for a number of reasons:
1. Employers are people, and peoples first reactions to anything is almost universally selfish: "how does this negatively affect me? And why should I suffer financially for someone else's gain?"
2. Most policy makers are still men, and policy makers only decide policy based on their own experiences. If they haven't suffered from lack of maternity leave, they won't prioritize it as an issue.
Protest is a means of shaking the sleeping masses and getting your message into the public consciousness. That's how you make change happen when nobody in power is motivated to change. Once you build enough momentum, they have to change.
During the maternity leave it is not the employer that is paying the salary of the mother (at least in Switzerland, and I assume it is the same in most if not all countries with a mandatory maternity leave), but the state. So the employer isn't paying someone to do nothing.
He also has enough time to plan the replacement since the leave can be announce 6 months or so in advance.
Maternity leave is covered by deductions from salary for everybody. It's a part of the Income Compensation Insurance, the rate of IC is 0.225% of the salary. It is deducted from the agreed-upon salary and additionally the employer pays an additional 0.225%, so in the total 0.45% is deducted.
https://www.bsv.admin.ch/bsv/en/home/social-insurance/eo-msv...
https://www.ahv-iv.ch/en/Leaflets-forms/Leaflets/Contributio...
There are other mandatory insurance deductions. Let's say the employer and the employee agree upon a wage of CHF 7500 a month, then first the employer deducts premiums of 5.125% or CHF 384 and also adds CHF 384 on his own and sends the money to the compensation office where the employer is located.
From my own experience as an employer I know that the compensation offices are very strict and know how levy the monies even from small mom-and-pop shops with employees. They are also helpful, as an employer you can call them or visit them and do what is neccessary. It's an efficient and tightly organized system.
> Fighting for women's rights is also figthing for a more just and balance society for everyone.
What are “women’s rights”? Is parental leave for men (or non-female genders or whatever is the correct way nowadays to refer to people who are not women) one of “women’s rights”?
>women [...] are under-represented in management positions
They are hugely under-represented in blue-collar jobs, as well. And over-represented in the health sciences, many fields of academia, and social work. Would all that be unfair to men?
Women are under represented in construction. Women are under represented in waste management. Women are under represented in front line duties. ...
What a pleasure this morning, lot of places in public transportation, fluid traffic, people arrive at work with a smile, then we can work on an exceptionally zen atmosphere.
They can repeat this operation as often as they please.
Absolute equality is not realistic. People are not equal, individuals are different from eachother. And I say that as someone belonging to a minority group. However, I am convinced that equality can not be forced. Differences are what make us interesting. And yes, there are differences between the sexes, no matter how you twist and/or turn it. Trying to ignore those is unrealistic and a fair bit naive.
Exactly. Blondes are paid more than the rest of women. Tall people are paid more.... Any criteria you select can lead to differences in outcomes.
This article is international politics and is off topic. Doesn't even reference tech companies.
Context is always important. Switzerland still has conscription in to the military and the culture that comes with it is very strong and male dominated - though it's importance has lessened somewhat.
Switzerland is a modern country and many have the same liberal values we all know but there appears to be a sizeable proportion which regard women for their, shall we say, utilitarian value and little else.
Given this backdrop, this strike shows that while there has been progress there is still a long way to go. Comparisons with the situation in other countries is a little unfair.
I live here and I really don't see a strong and male dominated culture, no more than when I was abroad in countries without conscription.
It's especially not the case in jobs requiring a degree, because degree holders are way more likely to have opted out and done either the civil service or pretended they were unfit and pay an extra tax instead.
However I guess it can slow things down from a different angle because currently the only gender currently legally oppressed is men, since the law guarantee the same rights to all but forces men into the conscription. This can breed some resentment, especially since progressives regularly fail to address it properly.
The military is a joke in Switzerland. Its literally called green holyday. More and more guys, including myself are opting out. All you have to not go is put your hand up when the military guy askes who doesn't want to go.
I am Switzerland so I don't have the context maybe but calling swiss culture male dominated seems pretty strange to me. Can you explain what that even means?
> Swiss women's pensions are 37% lower than men's, primarily because women take time out from work to raise their children
Well isn't it normal if you contribute less, you will receive less? Seems reasonable to me.
Is this right or wrong?
I am all for taking parental leave supported with full pay and benefits for a good long time, but is there a point where that support stops? Six months? A year? Two?
It's not for everyone but some people will exit the work force for years for family. I don't think it is surprising or discrimination to expect there to be a gender bias in people making that decision. Those people are included in statistics.
Is it right to expect that choice to have financial consequences or do we want to fully financially support that decision for some as a society and make it a money neutral decision?
Parental leave (actually only for women) is 14 weeks on 80% pay. After that many women take unpaid leave to enlongate that time. After that they reduce to 20%-60% time on the job or quit their all together to raise their children for a couple of years. This reduces their pension, because they work less.
And in a world where you can't both live off the man's income anymore, that's completely unfair.
Forcing people to trade their future income and security to raise kids is terrible.
How do you fix it? Any way you look at it, the person spending 12 hours a day every day sharpening their skills is going to have a much higher income on average than the person that spends their time raising kids.
Same as any quality of life improvement program: You tax people and use the money to make things better for society.
Reminds me of "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Living myself in Switzerland, married with a mother who stayed at home during the first 15 years of parentship, I can tell you we solved this without the government, we solved it as a team.
Just like we solved all our private matters.
The one thing we love about this country is that people here do NOT see tax as a solution to all. As a matter of fact, since this is a country with direct democracy, if we'd feel tax would be the solution we could initiate a referendum and solve that within months.
Why do i have to help pay for your choice to have kids? I dont like kids. I like fish. Will you help pay for my aquarium?
Because that's how it works to be part of a society. You sacrifice some of your work to raise the quality of life of everyone.
Roads, parks, power lines, communications cables, police, welfare, healthcare, sewage, electricity, clean water, healthy food, safe consumer products, clean environment, justice, protection for the vulnerable, duck wetlands, women's shelters, protection of creative works... These all cost money, and you pay for them with your taxes. Not everything goes equally to everyone, and not everything benefits everyone (by necessity), but the aggregate benefit is huge.
The point of taxes is to pay for things that benefit society as a whole. Having children, especially in high income countries, is not only important but also extremely necessary. I don't like children either but I also don't want to be the last generation to inhabit the planet. And it's important that children have support early in life to be successful.
It you’re concerned about fairness, the “salary” received during the maternity leave should no be related to the employment you’re taking leave from (not even to the fact of being or not employed).
What does "done" look like?
I am not at all that anything is, but I am saying in many cases we are closer to the finish line than the starting line. (If we come to think of it there are things which have been completed to the extent that many people don't even know they existed)
In some cases the good fight for equality has transferred into something besides good or equal.
When do you start thinking about how to cross the finish line and what should you do?
"stage", well said.
>However, women in Switzerland still earn on average 20% less than men, they are under-represented in management positions, and childcare remains not only expensive, but in short supply.
Women are less valuable? How will a strike solve this? I mean if this was true and I was a business owner I would only hire women because I could pay 20 % less. But of course that's not the way it works. Those "facts" are manipulative.
I believe the research in question does not speak on the grounds such as to suggest women earn 20% less for the same job vis-a-vis men, but rather claims due to women are being under-represented in a variety of high-level jobs, on average, they earn less.
And the reason may not be in the realm of misogynist inclinations depicted at high levels of government, it may be the case on average women choose professions that pay less.
We know that men are more likely to go into “nerdy” professions such as math or engineering, whereas women are more likely to go into the caring professions and to spend more time looking after children [0].
0: Geary (2010); Halpern (2012); Maccoby and Jacklin (1974)
Do men and women have the same level of education and have they chosen the same career paths in average? If they haven't then that 20 % is meaningless. As far as I know men and women can choose to get the degrees that they want and can choose to pursue the careers that they want. If they haven't chosen to do so what do they expect?
Ah I see you edited. Yes that was exactly my point. If they expect to get the same money for nursing that you can get for designing rockets then that's basically Communism.
More woman at my school in switzerland had the education to go into IT and yet we had 3-4 woman in 3 classes. That has zero to do with access to education and everything with personal choice.
One can argue its a society problem, but its not an education problem. Woman are overrepresented and get more education in general.
I experienced pretty much the same thing during the time I went to school. I specialized in IT during school already. We had about 2/3 women and 1/3 man. AFAIK, none of the women actually started to work in IT. Two or three man did.