Where women are particularly disadvantaged in Switzerland: equality has deteriorated in Switzerland

class=”sc-29f61514-0 jbwksb”>

For a week, tens of thousands of women paraded through the streets with purple banners. The main demand in the women’s strike: equal pay, minimum wage and a living pension. Critics asked whether the women’s strike was still necessary. After all, equality in this country is only as good as it gets.

If you take a look at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) latest Global Gender Gap Report, the answer is obvious. Equality has not yet been achieved in Switzerland. On the contrary: Switzerland has worsened compared to the previous year.

Switzerland lost 8 places

In a comparison of 146 countries, Switzerland fell from 13th to 21st in 2023. Gender differences in Switzerland are balanced at 78.3 percent. In 2021 Switzerland was still in the top 10. Why not anymore?

Quite simply: Switzerland had good prerequisites, but other countries are making faster progress when it comes to equality, leaving Switzerland behind. For example, Latvia, the UK and the Philippines are now ahead of Switzerland.

The DEF assesses each country’s equality according to four categories: economy, education, health and politics. Especially in the fields of business and education, Switzerland has lost some of its leadership. In the field of health and politics, Switzerland remained stable.

It fell 16 places and still ranks 63rd in the economy category. Switzerland underperforms, especially when it comes to wages. However, there is much room for improvement in the proportion of women among senior officials and managers.

In fact, Switzerland has had a new success: According to the consulting firm Swipra, the proportion of women on the boards of the largest Swiss companies has risen to 30.8 percent, thus exceeding 30 percent for the first time. Thus, the 2026 target was reached earlier than planned.

Several female engineers and computer scientists

In the field of education, Switzerland is losing more places than in the economy: it drops from 82nd to 102nd. This makes it one of the third worst among the countries surveyed.

Among other things, DEF analyzed how attainable certain qualifications are for men and women. The gap is especially huge in the technological field, engineering and MINT professions. Therefore, it is much more difficult for a woman to become an IT specialist or scientist than it is for a man.

Overall, the WEF concludes that the gender gap has been eliminated by 68.4 percent globally. That’s lower than two-thirds of the 146 countries surveyed.

Iceland took the undisputed top spot in the report. There the gender differences are balanced at 91.2%. Norway and Finland rank second and third. All three countries made progress. As last year, Afghanistan took the last place – the country achieved a value of only 40.5 percent.

Source :Blick