Many women in the Zurich city parliament, but hardly any requests to speak

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Since last year’s elections, the share of women in the city council, as Zurich’s city parliament is called, is a relatively high 40 percent. In the previous legislature, which lasted from the spring of 2018 to the spring of 2022, the share was only about one third.

An evaluation of the minutes of the approximately 200 sessions of the last legislature, conducted by Keystone-SDA, shows that less than a quarter of the more than 9,000 minutes of recorded speeches came from women. In terms of the number of logged characters, the proportion of women is slightly higher. The women spoke less often than men, but on average slightly longer. However, both values ​​were below the share of seats held by women – meaning they were doubly under-represented, so to speak.

Few women speak at SVP and EVP

Within the parties, the share of women in seats after the 2018 elections ranged from 18.8 percent (SVP) to 50 percent (AL). It is therefore not surprising that the proportion of women’s speeches was lowest in the SVP – it was around 7 percent. Women also had little say in the EPP: their share of speeches was about 15 percent and the share of women in seats was about a quarter.

The Greens are third from last. Despite the fact that women accounted for 37.5 percent of seats, women accounted for only about 17 percent of requests to speak. In the AL, the party with the highest percentage of women, the share was 30 percent, which is also far below the percentage of seats held by female parliamentarians.

In all parties, the percentage of speaking women is below that of the seats – with one exception: the FDP. A seat share of 20 percent resulted in a 30 percent share of the speeches. Responsible for this is primary councilor Yasmine Bourgeois, who heads the list of speakers of the FDP. Otherwise, the lists of prolific speakers are clearly male-dominated.

In the future the share of women will be shown

Who gets, how much or how little participation depends on various factors. Many of these, however, are in the hands of the parliamentarians themselves. Who will chair the parliamentary group? Who is on which committee or is presenting a proposal to the Council as a speaker?

The fact that women have even less say in parliament than would be expected on the basis of their share of seats depends, at least in part, on how often they occupy such key positions.

The evaluation also took into account the requests to speak from officials of the committees and chairmen of the political groups. On the other hand, the votes of council presidents and those of municipal councilors were selected.

From the start of the 2023/24 year of office in May, the parliamentary services will record and publish how often and for how long women have a say in the municipal council, they will announce when asked. This implements the requirement of two advances that the city council adopted almost a year ago.

SVP spoke a lot

Municipal councilor Marion Schmid (SP) was the first signatory of one initiative to advocate such a ‘gender watch protocol’. “The most important thing for me is to finally have tangible facts on this subject,” she said when asked. She also suspects that even at parties where you don’t necessarily expect it, women don’t get enough speaking time.

This assumption, at least in retrospect, can be confirmed. Whether the noticeably higher share of women in the city parliament since the 2022 elections will change anything, the official data from the city council will soon show.

In most cases, the party’s share of the speeches roughly matched the party’s strength in the city council—with one exception. With 14 seats in the 125-member city parliament, the SVP was clearly in the opposition and thus had little to say, but still had a lot to say: it had almost as many speeches as the strongest party in the council, the SP with 43 seats. (SDA)

Source:Blick