Women make up less than 20% of Switzerland’s construction workforce. In some fields such as metal construction, scaffolding and roofing the proportion of women is around 5%. Potential reasons for this include gender-specific conditioning and social norms and the high proportion of men in sector. A survey published this week points to other reasons. Between […]
European court rules against Swiss gender discrimination
Recently, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in favour of Max Beeler, a man who challenged Switzerland on gender based discrimination related to widowers pension payments. Under current rules widows receive pension payments related to their children for their entire life. Widowers on the other hand receive them only until their children reach the […]
Switzerland tops OECD gender index
For the fourth year, the OECD has ranked 120 countries on their political commitments and laws aimed at eliminating gender discrimination. The percentage based scores measure the remaining discrimination, so the lower the score the better. Overall scores range from 8% in Switzerland, down to 64% in Yemen. Some countries had gaps in their data […]
How a single event caused Switzerland’s global gender gap ranking to plunge
Every year the World Economic Forum (WEF), a Swiss-based foundation, publishes its Global Gender Gap ranking. This year Switzerland slipped to 21st, down from 11th last year. This slump was caused by a single event. The ranking scores countries in 14 areas. These are weighted and consolidated into a single figure. On 9 of the […]
Swiss gender pay gap only 2 percent, says study
A report published by the head hunting firm Korn Ferry finds pay differences between men and women doing the same job are statistically insignificant. The report says that while it is true that, as a group, women get paid less than men, it is not because they receive less for the same work. It is […]
