Abstract
This introduction shows how, from a ‘migrant’s perspective’, the defects of a newly adopted home country become particularly visible. Such voices, while always individual, allow us to paint a picture of Switzerland’s past that until now was seldom part of either Swiss historiography or collective memory. In this way, they bring to the fore not only private, but also structural conditions. And they make it possible to capture the political impact of everyday occurrences that are not passed down in other historical sources.
You have full access to this open access chapter, Download chapter PDF
Keywords
- A ‘migrant’s perspective’
- Switzerland as a straggler
- Domestic education
- Unequal opportunities at school
Switzerland as a Straggler in Relation to Gender Equality
In the boom years after the Second World War, Italians were by far the largest group of immigrants in Switzerland.Footnote 1 According to a common narrative in the history of migration, female ‘migrants’ coming from the south discovered ‘women’s emancipation’ through living in the supposedly more advanced north.Footnote 2 But Italian women coming to Switzerland also experienced the opposite. From a ‘migrant’s perspective’, the defects of a newly adopted home country become particularly visible. Of course, Italian laws were not more progressive in every aspect. For instance, it was only in 1970 that divorce was introduced in Italy.Footnote 3 Nevertheless, some social and political rights for women—such as female suffrage, wage equality, or a family law involving equal duties and responsibilities—had been introduced years, in some cases even decades before this was the case in Switzerland.Footnote 4 For instance, gender equality before the law had been included in the Italian Constitution of 1948 as a result of Lina Merlin’s work in the constituent assembly.Footnote 5 In Switzerland, it was only in 1981 that a similar article was added to the Constitution. Regarding maternity protection, women in Italy have benefited from job protection and financial compensation since the 1950s,Footnote 6 while in Switzerland the legal implementation of compulsory maternity insurance with universal coverage failed in several federal referendums and therefore remained unrealised on the national level until 2005. In 1975, Italy instituted a family law that abolished the legal status of the man as head of the family, replacing it with the concept of the husband and wife as equal partners. In Switzerland, such a reform came into effect only in 1988. In the federal referendum on this law in 1985, more than half of Swiss men still rejected the reform, and the new law was only adopted thanks to the support of Swiss women.Footnote 7 According to the marriage law that remained in force until 1988, a married woman needed the consent of her husband if she wanted to work and the male head of the family had the right to choose where the family would live, even if such provisions were often no longer put into practice towards the end. Such unequal treatment also had an impact on children. For instance, if my mother had been Swiss and my father Italian, I would not have received Swiss citizenship when I was born in 1977.Footnote 8
Already in 1967, such shortfalls were described by Maria Bonada in the newspaper Emigrazione italiana.Footnote 9 In Switzerland, this type of critique gained traction more broadly only with the rise of the new women’s movement in the 1970s, as Sarah Baumann has shown in her inspiring book.Footnote 10
An Exploratory Interview
I conducted an oral history interview with my mother in 2014 and a follow-up interview in 2018. In the first interview, I requested my mother to describe what she noticed about gender equality when she moved to Switzerland.Footnote 11 In the second, I asked her how she felt her experience of migration had shaped her political commitment. The fact that I was interviewing my own mother certainly had a substantial influence on the course of our conversation.Footnote 12
I chose to conduct an exploratory interview, as this makes it possible to combine a biographical interview with a thematic expert interview.Footnote 13 In such interviews, the course of the conversation is shaped interactively, so to speak ‘step by step’. One of the most important strengths of such an approach is the possibility of switching between the roles of the interested but relatively silent listener, the involved, committed interlocutor and the ‘annoying’ questioner.
Oral history thus allows us to construct a retrospective interpretation of certain incidents.Footnote 14 Interviews of this kind therefore reflect not only how the interviewees experienced historical change, but also how they give their lives meaning in the present, deciding on what to include in and exclude from their account. This, in turn, can differ depending on who is listening.
‘As If I Had Made a Journey Back in Time’
My mother migrated in 1974, at the age of 25, from a Northern Italian city to a village with a population of 3000 in the Rhine Valley. This area of Switzerland, right at the border with Austria, is known for the prevalence of conservative politics. Here, my father had grown up. Both his father and his mother traced their family genealogy in this village back to at least the seventeenth century. My mother, by contrast, came from the leftist region of Emilia-Romagna. In her city of origin, she participated, as a medical student, in the occupation of a psychiatric clinic. According to her, the student body was very politicised at the time. She also remembered that as a high school student she already experienced situations in which street demonstrations led to confrontations with neo-fascists.
My mother’s reason for moving was that she wanted to live with my father, whom she had met in Italy while he was travelling, and not because she was looking for a job abroad. In fact, the medical degree that she was in the process of obtaining ended up not being fully recognised in Switzerland and my mother was not allowed to work in a hospital or to open a practice.
My mother summarised her initial experiences in Switzerland as follows: ‘It seemed to me as if I had travelled back in time, I don’t know, a hundred or at least fifty years’. According to my mother, the ideas associated with the social movements of 1968 arrived later in Switzerland, and certainly in our village, which had various repercussions. My mother found the Swiss family law of that time absurd—including its consequences for daily life.
For instance, a wife required the signature of her husband when making larger purchases. Once, my mother ordered different skin creams from a local company. The bill was delivered to my father, as the head of the family was generally expected to be the one who pays the bills. My mother had not even given his name; in other words, the employees had gone to the trouble to research it, on the assumption that the male breadwinner would pay.Footnote 15 Moreover, in contrast to the situation in our village, my mother explained that in her home city, a woman with children who went to work was not considered a bad mother, a Rabenmutter, as this is called in German. According to her, in the cities of northern Italy, it was more common than in Switzerland for women to do wage-workFootnote 16 and, therefore, core timeFootnote 17 at schools had been implemented already when she was a child. In our village, they still did not exist when I went to school in the 1980s and 1990s, as it was simply taken for granted that mothers would stay at home.
It wasn’t just my mother who noticed this. Dinahlee Obey Siering arrived in Switzerland in 1992. She came from Liberia and had lived for two years in Washington, DC, before moving to Switzerland. In an interview, she recounted the following incident: ‘Once, when I was with my then sister-in-law, first the eldest child went to school, then the second eldest, and when the youngest left, the eldest was already back. I said: “What the hell is going on here?” and my sister-in-law replied: “Welcome to Switzerland, darling! Here the mother has to stay at home and be available every minute!”’.Footnote 18
A similar statement was also made by Delia Krieg-Trujillo, a lawyer and journalist who immigrated from Bolivia to Switzerland: ‘When I came to Switzerland, I was shocked, because there were no core times at school. For me and many other migrant women this was a matter of course back in our country of origin. And still, core times have not been generally introduced. This is structural discrimination!’Footnote 19
My mother also mentioned the case of a Swiss family friend who was a teacher in our village and who lost her job when she got married. Married female teachers were often let go because they were seen as providing unnecessary competition in a tight labour market.
Cooking and Sewing Courses for Girls, Geometry for Boys
Another example that shocked my mother concerned the didactic content of schoolwork itself. When I went to secondary school in the early 1990s, girls were sent to cooking, needlework and sewing courses, whereas the boys were taught geometry and technical drawing. However, pupils wishing to take the entrance examination for high school—i.e. the intermediate level between mandatory schooling and university—needed geometry. Correspondingly, if a girl wanted to take this examination, she had to ask to be admitted to the geometry classes—and this meant that, after the cooking course, she had to rush to the ‘boys’ lessons.’ I hated this domestic education curriculum and above all its claim to being scientific. In fact, it was the only time that a teacher seriously complained about my behaviour in class.
Regarding my background, I was clearly one of the privileged ones—both my parents had a university degree. This was very rare in our village. It comes as no surprise that only a very few girls, at the age of 12, opted for what was, after all, an extra study load. In my class, perhaps three girls attended the geometry lessons. In our cooking lessons, we usually prepared an appetiser, a main course and a dessert, whereas in our family, we only ever ate a little something for lunch. Not being used to such a heavy meal, I almost fell asleep in the geometry lessons that followed.
It is very interesting to analyse the historical contexts that led to the introduction of domestic education in Swiss schools. Many factors that had a formative influence on the history of Switzerland converged there in an exemplary manner, as we will see.
The discussions on the introduction of female handicrafts and home economics can be followed throughout the nineteenth century.Footnote 20 In the so-called poor schools, handicrafts were established as a school subject from the eighteenth century onwards. In turn, cantonal school laws gradually made this subject compulsory in the nineteenth century.Footnote 21 On the other hand, a compulsory home economics course was only introduced on a broad scale in the 1940s, but the subject has been taught in various forms since the nineteenth century.Footnote 22 Numerous organisations had campaigned for the education of women in domestic work, but the different actors did not always pursue the same goals.
Domestic education was, for instance, part of a comprehensive disciplinary process to instil bourgeois norms in the lower classes. Home economics was supposed to teach order, cleanliness, economy and diligence, and to serve as a means of stabilising a class society.Footnote 23 The aim was to keep employees productive and healthy, even at low wages, and to keep the workforce calm. From the example of the hard-working housewife, who is happy to get away with a mere fifteen-hour day, the family will ‘get to know work not as a curse but as a blessing’.Footnote 24 The family will thus see those who are better off without envy, closing the door to the idea of revolution. An advocate of domestic education wrote in 1893 that more domestic sense would lead the working class to a greater desire to work, greater attachment to employers and more satisfaction with its situation. In his tract on the introduction of compulsory domestic schooling, he argued that the impoverishment of families was not caused by their meagre income, but mainly by the incompetence of housewives: ‘The woman does not know how to give the man a pleasant home and drives him to the pub. Badly made coffee, an inadequately cooked or misprepared meal, an unmade bed, a hole in a stocking or gown are factors that can push a country down more than much of what a higher theory believes to be the cause of impoverishment, family breakdown and misery’.Footnote 25
Through domestic education, young women were supposed to learn to keep family maintenance costs as low as possible. At the same time, this was also intended to combat alcoholism and the breakdown of marriage. Order in the house ought lead to order in the state. Bourgeois women, on the other hand, found a publicly recognised field of activity through their commitment to education in home economics. Moreover, they also wanted to rectify the lack of qualified maids, as well as to professionalise and, at the same time, upgrade the status of domestic and thus female work.Footnote 26 The working class advocated free home economics lessons as well.Footnote 27 The commitment to this kind of education also had to do with the idea that Swiss homes should be prevented from being overrun with ‘foreign’ maids. Through more efficient household management, the Swiss housewife was supposed to be able to get along without domestic workers.Footnote 28 It was sometimes also claimed that Swiss men preferred foreign women as wives because these women were more skilled in domestic work, which would result in a creeping ‘foreignisation’ of Switzerland, which had to be prevented.Footnote 29
It was no coincidence that in the political climate before the Second World War, many cantons were prepared to comply with the old demand to make such education compulsory.Footnote 30 In the 1930s, the idea was in fact propagated that women and mothers were Switzerland’s second army.Footnote 31 The able housewife was thus placed at the soldier’s side.Footnote 32 The preparation of food was thus put at the service of security policy: war-related food shortages were to be avoided, and the percentage of men fit for service was to be increased through a good diet. From this perspective, domestic schooling for girls appears as a counterpart to the military education of boys.
Unequal Opportunities at School
As we have already seen, inequality of educational opportunities was produced by the introduction of these home economics classes, as girls were consequently ‘relieved’ from other subjects. Only with the equality article of 1995 was such gender-specific discrimination no longer legally permissible.Footnote 33
This unequal treatment of girls and boys in Swiss schools has still not undergone comprehensive historical investigation. The reason for this may be that each of Switzerland’s today 26 cantons had the authority to create its own curriculum, and each municipality even enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy with regard to school issues. A survey published in 1968 showed that, on average, girls received fewer teaching hours in all subjects relevant for high school entry examinations.Footnote 34 For instance, in the canton where I grew up (St. Gallen), boys received 380 more teaching hours in German than girls.Footnote 35
However, it was not only girls who were systematically disadvantaged in their education. For example, when I went to school, all children had to take an examination at the end of grade six, in order to decide who would go to secondary school and who would go to the so-called Realschule. Those who entered the Realschule had the opportunity to repeat the examination after one year. Most of the children from working-class families were first sent to the Realschule. Some passed to secondary school after a year. Only those who attended secondary school could later go on to high school. There were always very few that did so. Children from so-called guest worker families practically didn’t attend high school. There was exactly one student with such a background in my high school class. I remember that our secondary school teachers sometimes advised even good students from a so-called migrant background not go to high school. Many people report similar experiences from their childhood.Footnote 36 Today, in high schools, the number of female students has now overtaken the number of male students in all cantons.Footnote 37 Nevertheless, only about twenty percent of university professors are women.Footnote 38
Bring to the Fore Not Only Personal, But Also Structural Conditions
Of course, in terms of gender equality, Switzerland was not more backward than other countries in every respect. In this context, the early implementation of a liberal divorce law in Switzerland, for instance, has already been mentioned. In addition, regarding the debate about the use of gender-inclusive language, my mother stated that Switzerland was in fact more progressive than Italy in the 1990s.Footnote 39 However, the experiences my mother had when she first moved to Switzerland were an important reason for her engagement in political activities. First, she became part of the local women’s group of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland.Footnote 40 For her, this political engagement was a way to get to know people on the same wavelength, since—according to her—there were not many of them where we lived. Later, my mother was elected to the local school board for eight years and to the cantonal parliament for twelve years. She was not aware of any other politicians with dual citizenship in the cantonal parliament at that time. There, she fought for, among other things, a hospital emergency centre for rape victims and for gender-neutral language in laws.
Her experience of migration shaped her political engagement. For example, when it had to be decided how to spread the holidays over the whole year, she knew that long Christmas holidays were important for Italian families, in order to be able to visit their relatives. She was also acquainted with other school models, as both her parents and sisters worked as teachers in Italy. On her view, longer school days based on the model of a day school were ‘not a cruelty to children’. Not everybody appreciated this sort of political engagement. I remember that as a schoolgirl, a friend told me that his parents did not like my mother as a ‘foreigner’ getting involved with Swiss politics.
It is of course a subjective narrative that my mother presented during the interview. However, similar experiences were also articulated by Irena Brežná, for instance, who moved to Switzerland after the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia.Footnote 41 According to the literature, there is in fact a great deal of evidence that in Switzerland, in the boom years after the Second World War, the social and subjective exaltation of the housewife’s role was particularly marked.Footnote 42 It would be very interesting to carry out a systematic project focusing on different accounts of such experiences. These narratives would of course differ from person to person. For example, moving from a city to a small village or vice versa would, presumably, affect how the specific situation was perceived and, later, described. Such voices, while always individual, allow us to paint a picture of Switzerland’s past that until now was seldom part of either Swiss historiography or collective memory. In this way, they bring to the fore not only personal, but also structural conditions. And they would make it possible to capture the political impact of everyday occurrences that are not passed down in other historical sources.Footnote 43
Notes
- 1.
There is extensive literature on Italian immigration to Switzerland. A compact overview is offered by Toni Ricciardi, Breve storia dell’emigrazione italiana in Svizzera. Dall’esodo di massa alle nuove mobilità, Roma: Donzelli editore 2018.
- 2.
For such a perspective, see for example, Cristina Allemann-Ghionda, Conclusioni, in Allemann-Ghionda, Meyer-Sabino, and De Marchi Oechslin, Donne italiane in Svizzera, Basel: Dadò 1992, 269–288, 269. Andreina De Clementi, and Giovani e sole, Il prezzo della ricostruzione. L’emigrazione italiana nel secondo dopoguerra, Roma: Laterza 2010.
For a similar argument in regard to other groups see May B. Broda, East European Jewish Migration to Switzerland and the Formation of ‘New Women’, in Lewinsky and Mayoraz, East European Jews in Switzerland, Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter 2013, 149–173.
- 3.
On the relative liberality of Swiss divorce law and its implementation in the canton of Bern at the beginning of the twentieth century, see Caroline Arni, Entzweiungen. Die Krise der Ehe um 1900, Köln, Wien and Weimar: Böhlau 2004.
- 4.
Sarah Baumann, …und es kamen auch Frauen. Engagement italienischer Migrantinnen in Politik und Gesellschaft der Nachkriegsschweiz, Zürich: Seismo 2014, 45; Claudia Kaufmann, Italien, Die Stellung der Frau in der Schweiz. Teil IV: Frauenpolitik. Bericht der Eidgenössischen Kommission für Frauenfragen, Bern: Eidgenössische Drucksachen und Materialzentrale 1984, 225–228.
- 5.
Claudia Galimberti, Un cuore pensante. Lina Merlin, in Cioni, Di Caro, Doni, Galimberti, Levi, Palieri, Sancin, Di San Marzano, Tagliaventi, and Valentini, Donne della Repubblica, Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino 2016, 113–128, 119.
- 6.
The law of 1971 ‘extended the maternity-leave provisions first introduced in the 1950s, granting women giving birth five months’ leave at 80 percent of their salaries and the option of staying out for up to a year at 30 percent’. ‘Modernization’ and Welfare State Restructuring in Italy, in Michel and Mahon, Child Care Policy at the Crossroads: Gender and Welfare State Restructuring, Italy: The Impact on Child Care, New York: Routledge 2002, 171–190, 177.
- 7.
Elisabeth Joris and Heidi Witzig, Frauengeschichte(n). Dokumente aus zwei Jahrhunderten zur Situation der Frauen in der Schweiz, Zürich: Limmat Verlag 1991 (1986), 346.
- 8.
Die Stellung der Frau in der Schweiz. Teil III: Recht. Bericht der Eidgenössischen Kommission für Frauenfragen, Eidgenössische Drucksachen und Materialzentrale 1980, 5. Brigitte Studer, Citizenship as Contingent National Belonging: Married Women and Foreigners in Twentieth-Century Switzerland, Gender & History 13, 3 (2001), 622–654.
- 9.
‘Basterebbe accennare al fatto che in Isvizzera non esiste il diritto alla parità salariale, la difesa della maternità, non esiste une efficiente rete di asili e di scuole’. Maria Delfina Bonada, Verso una conferenza sull’ emigrazione feminile, in Emigrazione italiana, Organo mensile della Federazione delle Colonie Libere Italiane in Svizzera, Maggio (1967), 11. See also Maria Delfina Bonada, La donna emigrata, il lavoro, la famiglia, in Emigrazione italiana, Organo mensile della Federazione delle Colonie Libere Italiane in Svizzera, Ottobre (1967), 1–2.
- 10.
Baumann, …und es kamen auch Frauen. Engagement italienischer Migrantinnen in Politik und Gesellschaft der Nachkriegsschweiz, Zürich: Seismo 2014, 159.
- 11.
The recordings are in my possession. Both interviews were done in Italian.
- 12.
Pierre Bourdieu, Die biographische Illusion, Bios. Zeitschrift für Biograhieforschung und Oral History 90, 1 (1990), 74–81, 79.
- 13.
In what follows, see Anne Honer, Das Explorative Interview: zur Rekonstruktion der Relevanzen von Expertinnen und anderen Leuten, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Soziologie 20, 3 (1994), 623-640.
- 14.
Ulrike Jureit, Authentische und konstruierte Erinnerung - Methodische Überlegungen zu biographischen Sinnkonstruktionen, WerkstattGeschichte 18 (1997), 91–101; Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, The Oral History Reader, London: Routledge 1998; Dorothee Wierling, Oral History, in Maurer, Aufriss der historischen Wissenschaften. Neue Themen und Methoden der Geschichtswissenschaft, Stuttgart: Reclam 2001, 81–148; Sherna Gluck Berger and Daphne Patai, Women’s Words. The Feminist Practice of Oral History, New York and London: Routledge 1991.
- 15.
In this context, I should make a personal remark. As I was writing this section, we received a letter from the tax authorities saying that in order to refund overpaid taxes, the details of our bank account were needed. In addition, the letter stated that that we should indicate either our joint account or my husband’s account. A transfer to the wife’s account was said to be impossible, even if the refund concerned our joint taxation (I work full time). When I called the cantonal tax authority in order to complain about this unequal treatment, the administrator confirmed the impossibility of changing this procedure. Later I learned from Franzisca Frania that the equality offices of the city and canton of Berne repeatedly receive complaints about exactly this issue and are trying to find a solution with the tax administration. Statement made by Franzisca Frania in an e-mail, 24 November 2017.
- 16.
However, Italy as a whole had at the time a high rate of women working as housewives.
- 17.
In German ‘Blockzeiten’.
- 18.
The paragraph cited ends with the following statement: ‘In Africa, too, one is defined as a woman by the children. No matter how many degrees you have, you are simply “the mother of…”’ Dinahlee Obey Siering, Ich bin in einem Land aufgewachsen, in welchem die Hautfarbe kein Thema war, in Berlowitz, Joris, and Meierhofer-Mangeli, Terra incognita? Der Treffpunkt Schwarzer Frauen in Zürich, Zürich: Limmat Verlag 2013, 132–141, 139.
- 19.
Delia Krieg-Trujillo, Migrant women between concernment, participation and self-determination. Panel-discussion under the guidance of Inés Mateos, FemCities Conference: Migrant Women in European Cities (Basel 2011). Conference documentation, Vienna: 2012, https://www.wien.gv.at/menschen/frauen/pdf/femcities-2011.pdf (1 February 2018).
- 20.
Anne-Marie Stalder, Die Erziehung zur Häuslichkeit. Über den Beitrag des hauswirtschaftlichen Unterrichts zur Disziplinierung der Unterschichten im 19. Jahrhundert in der Schweiz, in Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte 34, 3 (1984), 370–384.
- 21.
Brigit Langenegger, Zur Geschichte des Handarbeitsunterrichts, in Kink and Kuster, Im Wandel der Zeit: LARWH 1910–1920, Herisau: LARWH (Lehrerinnen und Lehrer Appenzell Ausserrhoden für Werken und Hauswirtschaft) 2010, 4–15.
- 22.
Ursi Blosser and Elisabeth Joris, Zwei Fliegen auf einen Streich: Bildung für Haus- und Erwerbsarbeit in den ersten Frauenarbeitschulen der Schweiz, in Barben and Ryter, Verflixt und zugenäht! Frauenberufsbildung - Frauenerwerbsarbeit 1888–1988, Zürich: Chronos Verlag 1988, 65–75; Elisabeth Joris, Die Schweizer Hausfrau: Genese eines Mythos, in Brändli, Gugerli, Jaun, and Pfister, Schweiz im Wandel. Studien zur neueren Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Festschrift für Rudolf Braun zum 60. Geburtstag, Basel and Frankfurt am Main: Helbing und Lichtenhahn 1990, 99–116.
- 23.
Beatrix Mesmer, Ausgeklammert - eingeklammert. Frauen und Frauenorganisationen in der Schweiz des 19. Jahrhunderts, Basel: Helbing & Lichtenhahn 1988, 182.
- 24.
Rosina Gschwind, Koch- und Haushaltungskunde nebst einem Anhang über die Aufgabe der Frau in sozialer, sittlicher und pädagogischer Beziehung, Bern: K.J. Wyss 1894, 60. My translation.
- 25.
Otto Wyser, Die Einführung der obligatorischen Haushaltungsschule, Olten: Oltener Tagblatt 1893, 6. My translation.
- 26.
Céline Angehrn and Simona Isler, Hausarbeit als Beruf – eine Historisierung, etü – HistorikerInnen-Zeitschrift 2013, 6–9.
- 27.
Joris, Die Schweizer Hausfrau: Genese eines Mythos, in Brändli, Gugerli, Jaun, and Pfister, Schweiz im Wandel. Studien zur neueren Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Festschrift für Rudolf Braun zum 60. Geburtstag, Basel and Frankfurt am Main: Helbing und Lichtenhahn 1990, 99–116, 111.
- 28.
Rosa Neuenschwander, Die Überfremdung in der Hauswirtschaft, Tagung der Berner Frauen von Stadt und Land, veranstaltet vom Kantonalen Arbeitsamt Bern in Verbindung mit Mitgliedern verschiedener Frauenvereine (Gemeinnütziger Frauenverein, Lehrerinnen-, Hauswirtschaftslehrerinnen- und Arbeitslehrerinnenverein usw.), Bern: Büchler & Co. 1924, 11–18.
- 29.
Andrea Althaus, Vom Glück in der Schweiz? Weibliche Arbeitsmigration aus Deutschland und Österreich (1920–1965), Frankfurt am Main: Campus 2017, 79.
- 30.
Rolf Leemann, Der Hauswirtschaftsunterricht und seine Integration in die Volksschule unter dem Aspekt seines allgemeinbildenden Wertes, Fraubrunnen: Selbstverlag 1990, 152.
- 31.
Eugen Wyler, An unsere Frauen und Mütter! Und ein Wort an die Jugend!, in Schmid-Itten, Meili-Lüthi, and Wyler, Der Grenzdienst der Schweizerin 1914–1918. Von Frauen erzählt, Bern: A. Schmid & Cie 1934, 9.
- 32.
Claudia Crotti, ‘Frauen und Mütter sind gleichsam die zweite Armee unseres Landes’. Hauswirtschaft im Dienste der Sicherheitspolitik der Schweiz (1895–1945), in Boser, Bühler, Hofmann, and Müller, Pulverdampf und Kreidestaub. Beiträge zum Verhältnis zwischen Militär und Schule in der Schweiz im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, Bern: Bibliothek am Guisanplatz 2016, 167–189, 167.
- 33.
Renate Bieg, Zur Geschichte des Hauswirtschaftsunterrichts in Appenzell Ausserrhoden, in Kink and Kuster, Im Wandel der Zeit: LARWH 1910–1920, Herisau: LARWH (Lehrerinnen und Lehrer Appenzell Ausserrhoden für Werken und Hauswirtschaft) 2010, 16–29, 27.
- 34.
‘L’étude ci-jointe révèle pourtant une situation très claire: la fillette e la jeune fille suisse reçoit, à l’école primaire, une instruction inférieure à celle que reçoit le garçon. La différence entre les programmes est doublement grave dans les années qui précèdent l’entrée au Gymnase ou au Collège puisqu’ il y une situation d’infériorité à l’examen d’entrée ou au cours de la première année’. Rolande Gaillard, Enquêtes sur les programmes scolaires, préambule, in Frauenvereine, Erhebung über die Lehrpläne in den Volksschulen, 1968, 1–3, 3.
- 35.
Bund der Schweizerischen Frauenvereine, Erhebung über die Lehrpläne in den Volksschulen, 1968, 132. See also the data for 1977 published in Die Stellung der Frau in der Schweiz. Teil I: Gesellschaft und Wirtschaft. Bericht der Eidgenössischen Kommission für Frauenfragen, Eidgenössische Drucksachen und Materialzentrale 1979, 19.
- 36.
This semester, my students conducted interviews with politicians with an experience of migration. Discrimination at school was reported several times. Historical research is still lacking in this area.
- 37.
Janine Hosp and Luca De Carli, Bei der Matur überflügeln die Frauen die Männer, Der Bund (24 October 2017), 1.
- 38.
- 39.
Perhaps these early changes could also be interpreted as a kind of compensation for earlier delays.
- 40.
My mother made these two statements during the follow-up interview.
- 41.
‘Das Problem der Schweiz ist ihr Dünkel’. Interview mit Irena Brežná und Blend Hamza http://www.derbund.ch/schweiz/standard/das-problem-der-schweiz-ist-ihr-duenkel/story/12775030 (26 August 2016).
- 42.
Jakob Tanner and Brigitte Studer, Konsum und Distribution, in Halbeisen, Müller, and Veyrassat, Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Schweiz im 20. Jahrhundert, Basel: Schwabe 2012, 639–702, 680; Joris, Die Schweizer Hausfrau: Genese eines Mythos, in Brändli, Gugerli, Jaun, and Pfister, Schweiz im Wandel. Studien zur neueren Gesellschaftsgeschichte. Festschrift für Rudolf Braun zum 60. Geburtstag, Basel and Frankfurt am Main: Helbing und Lichtenhahn 1990, 99–116.
- 43.
Alistair Thomson, Moving Stories: Oral History and Migration Studies, Oral History 27, 1 (1999), 24–37.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this chapter or parts of it.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Falk, F. (2019). Introduction. In: Gender Innovation and Migration in Switzerland. Palgrave Studies in Migration History. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01626-5_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01626-5_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01625-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01626-5
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)