Thousands of women across Switzerland on Friday walked off the job, burned bras and blocked traffic in a day of demonstrations to demand fairer pay, more equality and an end to sexual harassment and violence. It was the first such protest in the Alpine nation in 28 years.
Discontent over sexism and workplace inequality in prosperous Switzerland underpinned the women’s strike. Many protesters were also demanding more pay, specifically for domestic workers, teachers and caregivers — jobs typically held by women.
Swiss female lawmakers — mostly decked out in purple, the movement’s color — streamed out of the Swiss Federal Palace in Bern, where several thousand women were demonstrating, public broadcaster Radio Television Suisse reported.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Hundreds of marchers also blocked roads near the main train station in Zurich, the country’s financial center.
Demonstrators in Geneva’s Parc Bertrand hoisted a banner showing that only 8 percent of jobs in engineering were held by women in Switzerland, in contrast to 91 percent of the country’s domestic helper jobs.
The Swiss Federal Statistical Office has said that women on average earned 12 percent less than men for similar work — the so-called “gender pay gap” — as of 2016, the latest figures available.
In late afternoon in Geneva, thousands spread out on the city’s landmark Plainpalais square in a sea of purple — chanting, waving flags and holding up defiant signs like one that read: “Don’t touch my uterus.”
Earlier in Lausanne, hundreds of women rallied at the city’s cathedral at about midnight on Thursday and marched downtown to set wooden pallets on fire, throwing items like neckties and bras into the inferno.
A few women scaled the cathedral to shout out the hour, a Swiss tradition rarely carried out by women.
In Lucerne, hundreds of women staged a sit-down protest in front of the city’s theater, the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper reported, and some of the newspaper’s female reporters joined in.
People across the country wore face paint or stickers.
In symbolic gestures large and small, businesses showed their support for the protests.
The Roche Tower in Basel, the northwestern city’s highest skyscraper, lit up in the logo of the movement. Restaurants and stores hung purple balloons and the strikers’ logos.
Swiss women were urged to leave their workplaces at 3:24pm — the time when organizers figured women should stop working to earn proportionally as much as men in a day.
Vanessa Trub, a Geneva pastor and vice president of a city association of ministers and deacons, said that protesters were also demanding longer paternity leave — currently just one day in Switzerland — to get men to help out more with childcare.
The International Labour Organization has reported that Switzerland is one of the worst nations in Europe and Central Asia when it comes to the post-high school education gap between the sexes, especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Of the 249 homicides recorded in the country from 2009 to last year, 75 percent of the victims were women and girls, office data showed.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
‘DELUSIONAL’: Targeting the families of Hamas’ leaders would not push the group to change its position or to give up its demands for Palestinians, Ismail Haniyeh said Israeli aircraft on Wednesday killed three sons of Hamas’ top political leader in the Gaza Strip, striking high-stakes targets at a time when Israel is holding delicate ceasefire negotiations with the militant group. Hamas said four of the leader’s grandchildren were also killed. Ismail Haniyeh’s sons are among the highest-profile figures to be killed in the war so far. Israel said they were Hamas operatives, and Haniyeh accused Israel of acting in “the spirit of revenge and murder.” The deaths threatened to strain the internationally mediated ceasefire talks, which appeared to gain steam in recent days even as the sides remain far
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of