"Switzerland must be a special democracy": Sociopolitical Compromise, Military Comradeship, and the Gender Order in 1930s and 1940s Switzerland

Christof Dejung
2010 The Journal of modern history  
The twentieth century's two world wars not only produced hitherto unimagined destruction; in many countries they also gave new impetus to calls for emancipation in the gender order. The experiences many women had while working in "male" occupations during the war could not simply be ignored after the fighting ended. 1 The suspension of the traditional gender system provoked massive ideological opposition that attempted to define the social, economic, and military benefits of women's
more » ... n in the war effort as the temporary product of an exceptional situation and, at the same time, to reinstate the traditional gender order. Yet it is interesting to note that it was precisely in the periods that followed the world wars that women gained the right to vote in many modern nations. 2 Remarkably, it was Switzerland, of all places-a country that in the nineteenth century was among the avant-garde in republican-democratic political thought-that did not grant women the right to vote until 1971, at which point the country was almost dead last in Europe in terms of progressive gender politics. 3 That the Swiss did not establish women's suffrage after either of the world wars shows that the right to vote was not an automatic reward for women's efforts in the wars: other processes, both political and sociocultural, were also in play. Many authors have described the Swiss political system-in which a high degree of local autonomy and democratic rights gives citizens the right to vote in referendums on constitutional reforms and on other changes to the law-as having been the greatest obstacle to equal rights for Swiss women. In addition, the argument runs, small-scale structures enabled men to come to political
doi:10.1086/650508 fatcat:xbkktl2uargn3lvun574ljnmbq