Campaigner recalls 1959 battle for women's vote

Marthe Bloch, 90, lives in canton Neuchâtel, where women obtained the right to vote and be elected 50 years ago today.

At the age of 20, she and a male friend finished their laboratory technician apprenticeships in Basel and applied for jobs at the muesli manufacturer Bircher in canton Argaau. When she was offered a lower salary than her friend, she asked why?

She was told that women married and didn’t need to earn the same as men. “And if I don’t get married?” she asked.

“That doesn’t change anything,” came the reply. “If you don’t marry, you won’t have a family to support.” Outraged, Marthe refused the job and decided to fight for equal rights.

Gender equality was not a new concept in Switzerland. Canton Bern tip-toed towards it in 1833 by giving women property owners and tax-payers the vote. Ironically, the local government abolished female voting rights in 1887 because they were incompatible with the principle of equal rights for all women.

Meanwhile, in 1868, the first feminist association was founded in Geneva, where, two years later, jewellery workers, dressmakers and housewives took to the streets to demand equal rights and salaries.

Around Switzerland, women’s professional and denominational groups sprang up to obtain various rights. Regional organisations formed the Swiss association for women’s suffrage in 1909.

In 1919 and 1929, the Swiss parliament approved motions in favour of women’s voting rights. Both times, the proposals went to the federal cabinet for scrutiny but nothing happened.

Several cantonal initiatives were rejected by a majority of liberals and conservatives. In 1919, canton Neuchâtel refused women the right to vote in the first of its four referendums on the issue.

By that time, in the Anglophone world, women were voting in New Zealand (1893), Australia (1902, although indigenous Australians of both sexes had to wait until 1962) and Canada (1918). American women voted from 1920. However, the first country to give women the right to vote and be elected was Finland (1906).

A giant plaster snail that accompanied women on a march in Bern in 1928 was symbolic but ineffective. That year, while Swiss female anti-feminists united to call for women to stay at home, Britons celebrated the Equal Franchise Act.

The next decade’s world economic crisis provided an unfavourable climate for women’s rights. Shortly afterwards, Marthe Bloch married and moved to La Chaux-de-Fonds.

Unable to find work in her field, she helped her husband with his business and brought up their children. “It meant I could be a feminist without the risk of losing my job,” she says.

She joined a small group of women who met regularly in a tea-room to talk about their situation. The group developed and organised meetings to inform other women.

Marthe says they “demonstrated discreetly." Yet that did not prevent somebody throwing a stone at her head when she and other feminists infiltrated a May Day procession.

One group member’s husband made her choose between feminism or divorce.  “Obviously, she chose to stay with her family but she was devastated,” says Marthe.

Other members had left-wing husbands who were sympathetic to the cause. “It was through the political action of men, with us women working in the background, that we obtained the right to vote,” Marthe points out.

Although a national referendum in 1959 witnessed a massively negative reaction (67 per cent against), cantons Neuchâtel, Geneva and Vaud emerged in favour.

On September 28 of the same year, after years of opposition, voters gave women political rights in Neuchâtel. Support from the Liberal Party and some Radicals had tipped the scales.

Marthe remembers celebrating discreetly indoors. “We were so happy, but we didn’t dare draw attention to ourselves - we had our families to protect.”

Not all women took advantage of their new rights. “Their husbands told them ‘Don’t vote, I’ll vote for us both,’” says Marthe.

Others went to the ballot-box in timorous defiance. “It was sad to see some women looking so frightened when they went to vote,” Marthe remembers.

In 1960, canton Neuchâtel elected Switzerland’s first female councillor and cantonal parliamentarian. That year, Geneva gave women the right to vote. Six years passed before a fourth canton, Basel-Stadt, did the same.

By 1971, when 67 percent of voters sanctioned equal political rights in a national referendum, they were still non-existent in 13 cantons.

Unfortunately, the implementation of these rights was left to the cantons without a deadline. Worse, some cantons passed the buck to the communes.

Several communes in Obwald, Solothurn and Graubunden refused women their democratic rights until the 1980s. It was only in 1990, when a Federal Supreme Court decision obliged the half-canton Appenzell Innerrhoden to implement these rights, that equal suffrage was finally achieved nationwide.