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Comment by beagle3 | Hacker News Reader

Women in Switzerland did not have equal voting rights until 1990, when the last (small) canton finally made them equal. But it was only in 1971 when they first gained the right to vote at all.

A Canadian friend living in Switzerland told me that even though there aren't any legal limitations on women any more, the culture in still much more tilted towards "a woman's place is it home raising the kids" than in Canada or the US.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...

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> “a woman’s place is [in] the home raising the kids”

This is something that is commonly said here but I don’t have any data on whether people believe it or not. There are, however, some structural reasons why women may stay at home to raise kids:

1) Paternity leave is generally poor. There’s no statutory minimum and in many cases men only get one or two days off. There will be a referendum soon on a two week statutory minimum but it’s facing a lot of opposition from people concerned with strain on small businesses. By contrast, women get something like 16 weeks.

2) Childcare is extremely expensive. I’m sure the price varies but it’s not uncommon to hear of people spending 2500CHF (approx $2500) per month per kid for childcare. It may not make sense for some families to pay so much for childcare just so both parents can work, especially if more than one child needs care.

> but it’s facing a lot of opposition from people concerned with strain on small businesses.

Wouldn't it make more sense to say that every couple can collectively take the previous duration of maternity leave? So, if it used to be 16 weeks, make that into a bucket that each parent can spend as they see fit. Each parent could take 8 weeks, or the man could take the entire 16 weeks with the woman returning to work immediately, etc.

Maybe there's other reasons why the length should be extended or what have you—I'm not familiar with the situation—but this is how you'd correct a sexist policy in a way that shouldn't make businesses any worse off.

As a German living in Switzerland, I was quite surprised by this when I came here. Just as an example, officially mandated paternal leave is 1 day. In Germany it is something like 6 months I think.

Uhh, no. It's 14 weeks for the mother, but, granted, a few days for the father.

Some companies may grant more, but that's voluntary.

It's literally not even a few days for the father. There is a referendum on the books to raise it to 2 weeks. Luckily my employer gives me 12 weeks but as you say, this is voluntary.

You gave to realize that Switzerland is multicultural. For instance women suffrage was given in 1959 in canton de Vaud (French speaking part of Switzerland), and that was is true in one part of Switzerland can be quite different elsewhere in the country.

That's still later than 90% of Europe, not really high praise :-)

The 1959 right was for local referendums only, though. The first nation wide referendum women could vote in was 1971 (and not all of them could until 1990).

On the other hand, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23415639 for a list of female presidents[1] since 1991.

Women had voting rights much earlier in the US (1920) and USSR (1922) but both those polities seem to have produced exclusively male leadership lists ever since.

[1] for instance, this year's president (foreground), playing a duet with the interior minister (background). YouTube is failing me at finding an equivalent Trump/Azar duet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvodASdJ5Hs

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