What a pleasure this morning, lot of places in public transportation, fluid traffic, people arrive at work with a smile, then we can work on an exceptionally zen atmosphere.
They can repeat this operation as often as they please.
In 21st century it's fashionable to lobby the government to assign you rents. If you don't protest, you only get what the market thinks is fair. That's not enough.
>However, women in Switzerland still earn on average 20% less than men, they are under-represented in management positions, and childcare remains not only expensive, but in short supply.
Women are less valuable? How will a strike solve this? I mean if this was true and I was a business owner I would only hire women because I could pay 20 % less. But of course that's not the way it works. Those "facts" are manipulative.
I believe the research in question does not speak on the grounds such as to suggest women earn 20% less for the same job vis-a-vis men, but rather claims due to women are being under-represented in a variety of high-level jobs, on average, they earn less.
And the reason may not be in the realm of misogynist inclinations depicted at high levels of government, it may be the case on average women choose professions that pay less.
We know that men are more likely to go into “nerdy” professions such as math or engineering, whereas women are more likely to go into the caring professions and to spend more time looking after children [0].
0: Geary (2010); Halpern (2012); Maccoby and Jacklin (1974)
Do men and women have the same level of education and have they chosen the same career paths in average? If they haven't then that 20 % is meaningless. As far as I know men and women can choose to get the degrees that they want and can choose to pursue the careers that they want. If they haven't chosen to do so what do they expect?
Ah I see you edited. Yes that was exactly my point. If they expect to get the same money for nursing that you can get for designing rockets then that's basically Communism.
More woman at my school in switzerland had the education to go into IT and yet we had 3-4 woman in 3 classes. That has zero to do with access to education and everything with personal choice.
One can argue its a society problem, but its not an education problem. Woman are overrepresented and get more education in general.
I experienced pretty much the same thing during the time I went to school. I specialized in IT during school already. We had about 2/3 women and 1/3 man. AFAIK, none of the women actually started to work in IT. Two or three man did.
I see just two comments right now and I see a lot of cynism.
Things are better today than in the past thanks to people fighting for their and others rights. And the job is not finished.
Democracy is not something that happens once each four years. It's important to vote, but as important is to express your dissatisfaction with the wrongdoings of the system.
> Ms Born, who joined a newsroom staffed entirely by men in 1986, is quietly optimistic. "We've achieved some good things since 1991," she points out. "We have maternity leave now."
Parental leave seams such a natural right to have that it's strange that there exists any opposition to it. Mothers and fathers benefit from it. Fighting for women's rights is also figthing for a more just and balance society for everyone.
> Parental leave seams such a natural right to have that it's strange that there exists any opposition to it. Mothers and fathers benefit from it. Fighting for women's rights is also figthing for a more just and balance society for everyone.
Yet our government (I'm swiss) stubbornly refuses to introduce a paternity leave. This will hopefully change in the coming years because they will be forced to through an initiative (one collected enough signatures already and a vote will follow).
> Parental leave seams such a natural right to have that it's strange that there exists any opposition to it.
There's opposition to it for a number of reasons:
1. Employers are people, and peoples first reactions to anything is almost universally selfish: "how does this negatively affect me? And why should I suffer financially for someone else's gain?"
2. Most policy makers are still men, and policy makers only decide policy based on their own experiences. If they haven't suffered from lack of maternity leave, they won't prioritize it as an issue.
Protest is a means of shaking the sleeping masses and getting your message into the public consciousness. That's how you make change happen when nobody in power is motivated to change. Once you build enough momentum, they have to change.
During the maternity leave it is not the employer that is paying the salary of the mother (at least in Switzerland, and I assume it is the same in most if not all countries with a mandatory maternity leave), but the state. So the employer isn't paying someone to do nothing.
He also has enough time to plan the replacement since the leave can be announce 6 months or so in advance.
Maternity leave is covered by deductions from salary for everybody. It's a part of the Income Compensation Insurance, the rate of IC is 0.225% of the salary. It is deducted from the agreed-upon salary and additionally the employer pays an additional 0.225%, so in the total 0.45% is deducted.
There are other mandatory insurance deductions. Let's say the employer and the employee agree upon a wage of CHF 7500 a month, then first the employer deducts premiums of 5.125% or CHF 384 and also adds CHF 384 on his own and sends the money to the compensation office where the employer is located.
From my own experience as an employer I know that the compensation offices are very strict and know how levy the monies even from small mom-and-pop shops with employees. They are also helpful, as an employer you can call them or visit them and do what is neccessary. It's an efficient and tightly organized system.
> Fighting for women's rights is also figthing for a more just and balance society for everyone.
What are “women’s rights”? Is parental leave for men (or non-female genders or whatever is the correct way nowadays to refer to people who are not women) one of “women’s rights”?
I am all for taking parental leave supported with full pay and benefits for a good long time, but is there a point where that support stops? Six months? A year? Two?
It's not for everyone but some people will exit the work force for years for family. I don't think it is surprising or discrimination to expect there to be a gender bias in people making that decision. Those people are included in statistics.
Is it right to expect that choice to have financial consequences or do we want to fully financially support that decision for some as a society and make it a money neutral decision?
Parental leave (actually only for women) is 14 weeks on 80% pay. After that many women take unpaid leave to enlongate that time. After that they reduce to 20%-60% time on the job or quit their all together to raise their children for a couple of years. This reduces their pension, because they work less.
How do you fix it? Any way you look at it, the person spending 12 hours a day every day sharpening their skills is going to have a much higher income on average than the person that spends their time raising kids.
Because that's how it works to be part of a society. You sacrifice some of your work to raise the quality of life of everyone.
Roads, parks, power lines, communications cables, police, welfare, healthcare, sewage, electricity, clean water, healthy food, safe consumer products, clean environment, justice, protection for the vulnerable, duck wetlands, women's shelters, protection of creative works... These all cost money, and you pay for them with your taxes. Not everything goes equally to everyone, and not everything benefits everyone (by necessity), but the aggregate benefit is huge.
The point of taxes is to pay for things that benefit society as a whole. Having children, especially in high income countries, is not only important but also extremely necessary. I don't like children either but I also don't want to be the last generation to inhabit the planet. And it's important that children have support early in life to be successful.
Reminds me of "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Living myself in Switzerland, married with a mother who stayed at home during the first 15 years of parentship, I can tell you we solved this without the government, we solved it as a team.
Just like we solved all our private matters.
The one thing we love about this country is that people here do NOT see tax as a solution to all. As a matter of fact, since this is a country with direct democracy, if we'd feel tax would be the solution we could initiate a referendum and solve that within months.
It you’re concerned about fairness, the “salary” received during the maternity leave should no be related to the employment you’re taking leave from (not even to the fact of being or not employed).
I am not at all that anything is, but I am saying in many cases we are closer to the finish line than the starting line. (If we come to think of it there are things which have been completed to the extent that many people don't even know they existed)
In some cases the good fight for equality has transferred into something besides good or equal.
When do you start thinking about how to cross the finish line and what should you do?
Absolute equality is not realistic. People are not equal, individuals are different from eachother. And I say that as someone belonging to a minority group. However, I am convinced that equality can not be forced. Differences are what make us interesting.
And yes, there are differences between the sexes, no matter how you twist and/or turn it. Trying to ignore those is unrealistic and a fair bit naive.
Context is always important. Switzerland still has conscription in to the military and the culture that comes with it is very strong and male dominated - though it's importance has lessened somewhat.
Switzerland is a modern country and many have the same liberal values we all know but there appears to be a sizeable proportion which regard women for their, shall we say, utilitarian value and little else.
Given this backdrop, this strike shows that while there has been progress there is still a long way to go. Comparisons with the situation in other countries is a little unfair.
The military is a joke in Switzerland. Its literally called green holyday. More and more guys, including myself are opting out. All you have to not go is put your hand up when the military guy askes who doesn't want to go.
I am Switzerland so I don't have the context maybe but calling swiss culture male dominated seems pretty strange to me. Can you explain what that even means?
I live here and I really don't see a strong and male dominated culture, no more than when I was abroad in countries without conscription.
It's especially not the case in jobs requiring a degree, because degree holders are way more likely to have opted out and done either the civil service or pretended they were unfit and pay an extra tax instead.
However I guess it can slow things down from a different angle because currently the only gender currently legally oppressed is men, since the law guarantee the same rights to all but forces men into the conscription. This can breed some resentment, especially since progressives regularly fail to address it properly.
> childcare remains not only expensive, but in short supply.
Childcare is expsneive period and it will still be if you force other people to pay it. I have never understood why people demand that society pays for their children. Having children is a 100% voluntary activity in todays day and age.
I don't demand that my hobbies get payed by society.
The taxes already massivly subsidies children by getting child money, paying for the whole school system and many other things as well.
I see zero reasons why one should just be able to have children and have child care and school payed for the first 20 years of your childs live.
Tons of people make a choice to have children because the would like to have and raise children. I don't see how that is not the same as hobby. Its a totally voluntary activity that primarly benefits yourself and your own family and most people do it because they just want to.
> Having a next generation growing up well-educated and well-fed is, in the grand scheme of things, important.
That is already provided currently. That and much more.
> Raising children is not a hobby, it's a social necessity.
Outside of nationalist 'we need to have a strong population' or basic evolutionary 'human survival' concerns I really don't see how it is a necessity for the actual people living in the country, specially all of those that don't have or want children.
People think this because this is how they have already thought about it but I really don't see how that makes sense for actual people living here.
> Its a totally voluntary activity that primarly benefits yourself and your own family and most people do it because they just want to.
I don't think the main beneficiary of raising children is their family. That child will one day grow into adult who will contribute to society with ideas and labour.
> Outside of nationalist 'we need to have a strong population' or basic evolutionary 'human survival' concerns I really don't see how it is a necessity for the actual people living in the country, specially all of those that don't have or want children.
Well, I don't think people who don't have or don't want children should have them. But within a society, someone needs to have them. Because someone needs to be your waiter, your janitor, your doctor, lawyer, grocer, plumber – I mean, every activity that is provided to us is provided by someone who once was a child. Everyone we work for and with was also once a child.
Given that both people who want and don't want children benefit of there being a society at all, and this society is made out of grown-up children, it's in society's interest to make it easier.
Raising a family is great but is also a burden. The benefits however are shared with the society at large. Also for people who don't want children to be able to not have them and still enjoy the benefits, it makes sense to try to spread the burden widely among society.
I would much prefer if we didn't have plumbers and janitors and grocers and lawyers. I would much prefer if the global population was closer to 100M and we could all live comfortably without people reproducing uncontrollably.
I, for one, would prefer paying people to _not_ have children.
> I don't think the main beneficiary of raising children is their family. That child will one day grow into adult who will contribute to society with ideas and labour.
The waste majority of the benefit is for the family.
I personally don't need that persons specific labor as there are many people who I could pay to do these things. Less population might mean a small overall raised price for labor cost in general but that is a TINY fraction of what it would cost compared to financing peoples first 20 years (and last 20 btw).
And in terms of ideas, the chance that this one person has a significant idea that gone have effects so significant to impact my live is so hilariously small its not even worth talking about.
> But within a society, someone needs to have them.
Why?
> Because someone needs to be your waiter, your janitor, your doctor, lawyer, grocer, plumber – I mean, every activity that is provided to us is provided by someone who once was a child. Everyone we work for and with was also once a child.
Again. I'm not arguing that nobody should have children. I'm saying that its not effective for me to pay for children for 20 years in order for there to be more.
You are essentially simply arguing again that I might have to pay slightly more for labor, but again, I'm fine with that as it is a far smaller cost compared to child care.
And also immigration would be a far superior and cheaper way to increase the labor pool of society.
I don't particularly care if human population declines over the next 100 years, it doesn't impact my life at all.
> Given that both people who want and don't want children benefit of there being a society at all, and this society is made out of grown-up children, it's in society's interest to make it easier.
My argument is that the benefit I get is 100x or more smaller then the cost that I pay.
> Raising a family is great but is also a burden. The benefits however are shared with the society at large. Also for people who don't want children to be able to not have them and still enjoy the benefits, it makes sense to try to spread the burden widely among society.
You need to actual show me that the cost benefit calculation for me makes sense. You demand I pay more and you claim some benefit to me. But if you actually do the calculation you will see (and pretty much everybody who has studied this did so) that its not effective for me as an individual.
Quite simply you are asking people who don't have children to finance the live choices of people who do.
Agreed. And, there is a lot of dishonesty when it comes to how childcare money is spent. Case in point: My parents received about 100000 EUR in disability care money over the 14 years I was living at home. In that time, my family didn't go on a single holiday trip or anything like that. While I wasn't treated poorly, I also never saw any of that disability money used towards me. The truth is, my father spent it all for alcohol and things I probably dont want to know.
And nobody ever evaluated if the money was spent on me. There is a lot to do when it comes to regulating how parents receive funding from the general public.
Another case in point: Someone we know is having their third child with the third father, and openly admits she does this so she can live off the childcare money. She doesn't particular care for her children, they are partly shoved off to her grandmother. She uses her cildren as a source of income. And she is not alone.
>women [...] are under-represented in management positions
They are hugely under-represented in blue-collar jobs, as well. And over-represented in the health sciences, many fields of academia, and social work. Would all that be unfair to men?
43 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 46.3 ms ] threadThey can repeat this operation as often as they please.
>However, women in Switzerland still earn on average 20% less than men, they are under-represented in management positions, and childcare remains not only expensive, but in short supply.
Women are less valuable? How will a strike solve this? I mean if this was true and I was a business owner I would only hire women because I could pay 20 % less. But of course that's not the way it works. Those "facts" are manipulative.
And the reason may not be in the realm of misogynist inclinations depicted at high levels of government, it may be the case on average women choose professions that pay less.
We know that men are more likely to go into “nerdy” professions such as math or engineering, whereas women are more likely to go into the caring professions and to spend more time looking after children [0].
0: Geary (2010); Halpern (2012); Maccoby and Jacklin (1974)
Ah I see you edited. Yes that was exactly my point. If they expect to get the same money for nursing that you can get for designing rockets then that's basically Communism.
One can argue its a society problem, but its not an education problem. Woman are overrepresented and get more education in general.
Things are better today than in the past thanks to people fighting for their and others rights. And the job is not finished.
Democracy is not something that happens once each four years. It's important to vote, but as important is to express your dissatisfaction with the wrongdoings of the system.
> Ms Born, who joined a newsroom staffed entirely by men in 1986, is quietly optimistic. "We've achieved some good things since 1991," she points out. "We have maternity leave now."
Parental leave seams such a natural right to have that it's strange that there exists any opposition to it. Mothers and fathers benefit from it. Fighting for women's rights is also figthing for a more just and balance society for everyone.
Yet our government (I'm swiss) stubbornly refuses to introduce a paternity leave. This will hopefully change in the coming years because they will be forced to through an initiative (one collected enough signatures already and a vote will follow).
There's opposition to it for a number of reasons:
1. Employers are people, and peoples first reactions to anything is almost universally selfish: "how does this negatively affect me? And why should I suffer financially for someone else's gain?"
2. Most policy makers are still men, and policy makers only decide policy based on their own experiences. If they haven't suffered from lack of maternity leave, they won't prioritize it as an issue.
Protest is a means of shaking the sleeping masses and getting your message into the public consciousness. That's how you make change happen when nobody in power is motivated to change. Once you build enough momentum, they have to change.
He also has enough time to plan the replacement since the leave can be announce 6 months or so in advance.
https://www.bsv.admin.ch/bsv/en/home/social-insurance/eo-msv...
https://www.ahv-iv.ch/en/Leaflets-forms/Leaflets/Contributio...
There are other mandatory insurance deductions. Let's say the employer and the employee agree upon a wage of CHF 7500 a month, then first the employer deducts premiums of 5.125% or CHF 384 and also adds CHF 384 on his own and sends the money to the compensation office where the employer is located.
From my own experience as an employer I know that the compensation offices are very strict and know how levy the monies even from small mom-and-pop shops with employees. They are also helpful, as an employer you can call them or visit them and do what is neccessary. It's an efficient and tightly organized system.
What are “women’s rights”? Is parental leave for men (or non-female genders or whatever is the correct way nowadays to refer to people who are not women) one of “women’s rights”?
I am all for taking parental leave supported with full pay and benefits for a good long time, but is there a point where that support stops? Six months? A year? Two?
It's not for everyone but some people will exit the work force for years for family. I don't think it is surprising or discrimination to expect there to be a gender bias in people making that decision. Those people are included in statistics.
Is it right to expect that choice to have financial consequences or do we want to fully financially support that decision for some as a society and make it a money neutral decision?
Forcing people to trade their future income and security to raise kids is terrible.
Roads, parks, power lines, communications cables, police, welfare, healthcare, sewage, electricity, clean water, healthy food, safe consumer products, clean environment, justice, protection for the vulnerable, duck wetlands, women's shelters, protection of creative works... These all cost money, and you pay for them with your taxes. Not everything goes equally to everyone, and not everything benefits everyone (by necessity), but the aggregate benefit is huge.
Living myself in Switzerland, married with a mother who stayed at home during the first 15 years of parentship, I can tell you we solved this without the government, we solved it as a team.
Just like we solved all our private matters.
The one thing we love about this country is that people here do NOT see tax as a solution to all. As a matter of fact, since this is a country with direct democracy, if we'd feel tax would be the solution we could initiate a referendum and solve that within months.
I am not at all that anything is, but I am saying in many cases we are closer to the finish line than the starting line. (If we come to think of it there are things which have been completed to the extent that many people don't even know they existed)
In some cases the good fight for equality has transferred into something besides good or equal.
When do you start thinking about how to cross the finish line and what should you do?
Switzerland is a modern country and many have the same liberal values we all know but there appears to be a sizeable proportion which regard women for their, shall we say, utilitarian value and little else.
Given this backdrop, this strike shows that while there has been progress there is still a long way to go. Comparisons with the situation in other countries is a little unfair.
I am Switzerland so I don't have the context maybe but calling swiss culture male dominated seems pretty strange to me. Can you explain what that even means?
It's especially not the case in jobs requiring a degree, because degree holders are way more likely to have opted out and done either the civil service or pretended they were unfit and pay an extra tax instead.
However I guess it can slow things down from a different angle because currently the only gender currently legally oppressed is men, since the law guarantee the same rights to all but forces men into the conscription. This can breed some resentment, especially since progressives regularly fail to address it properly.
Childcare is expsneive period and it will still be if you force other people to pay it. I have never understood why people demand that society pays for their children. Having children is a 100% voluntary activity in todays day and age.
I don't demand that my hobbies get payed by society.
The taxes already massivly subsidies children by getting child money, paying for the whole school system and many other things as well.
I see zero reasons why one should just be able to have children and have child care and school payed for the first 20 years of your childs live.
Having a next generation growing up well-educated and well-fed is, in the grand scheme of things, important.
Raising children is not a hobby, it's a social necessity.
> Having a next generation growing up well-educated and well-fed is, in the grand scheme of things, important.
That is already provided currently. That and much more.
> Raising children is not a hobby, it's a social necessity.
Outside of nationalist 'we need to have a strong population' or basic evolutionary 'human survival' concerns I really don't see how it is a necessity for the actual people living in the country, specially all of those that don't have or want children.
People think this because this is how they have already thought about it but I really don't see how that makes sense for actual people living here.
I don't think the main beneficiary of raising children is their family. That child will one day grow into adult who will contribute to society with ideas and labour.
> Outside of nationalist 'we need to have a strong population' or basic evolutionary 'human survival' concerns I really don't see how it is a necessity for the actual people living in the country, specially all of those that don't have or want children.
Well, I don't think people who don't have or don't want children should have them. But within a society, someone needs to have them. Because someone needs to be your waiter, your janitor, your doctor, lawyer, grocer, plumber – I mean, every activity that is provided to us is provided by someone who once was a child. Everyone we work for and with was also once a child.
Given that both people who want and don't want children benefit of there being a society at all, and this society is made out of grown-up children, it's in society's interest to make it easier.
Raising a family is great but is also a burden. The benefits however are shared with the society at large. Also for people who don't want children to be able to not have them and still enjoy the benefits, it makes sense to try to spread the burden widely among society.
I, for one, would prefer paying people to _not_ have children.
The waste majority of the benefit is for the family.
I personally don't need that persons specific labor as there are many people who I could pay to do these things. Less population might mean a small overall raised price for labor cost in general but that is a TINY fraction of what it would cost compared to financing peoples first 20 years (and last 20 btw).
And in terms of ideas, the chance that this one person has a significant idea that gone have effects so significant to impact my live is so hilariously small its not even worth talking about.
> But within a society, someone needs to have them.
Why?
> Because someone needs to be your waiter, your janitor, your doctor, lawyer, grocer, plumber – I mean, every activity that is provided to us is provided by someone who once was a child. Everyone we work for and with was also once a child.
Again. I'm not arguing that nobody should have children. I'm saying that its not effective for me to pay for children for 20 years in order for there to be more.
You are essentially simply arguing again that I might have to pay slightly more for labor, but again, I'm fine with that as it is a far smaller cost compared to child care.
And also immigration would be a far superior and cheaper way to increase the labor pool of society.
I don't particularly care if human population declines over the next 100 years, it doesn't impact my life at all.
> Given that both people who want and don't want children benefit of there being a society at all, and this society is made out of grown-up children, it's in society's interest to make it easier.
My argument is that the benefit I get is 100x or more smaller then the cost that I pay.
> Raising a family is great but is also a burden. The benefits however are shared with the society at large. Also for people who don't want children to be able to not have them and still enjoy the benefits, it makes sense to try to spread the burden widely among society.
You need to actual show me that the cost benefit calculation for me makes sense. You demand I pay more and you claim some benefit to me. But if you actually do the calculation you will see (and pretty much everybody who has studied this did so) that its not effective for me as an individual.
Quite simply you are asking people who don't have children to finance the live choices of people who do.
Another case in point: Someone we know is having their third child with the third father, and openly admits she does this so she can live off the childcare money. She doesn't particular care for her children, they are partly shoved off to her grandmother. She uses her cildren as a source of income. And she is not alone.
They are hugely under-represented in blue-collar jobs, as well. And over-represented in the health sciences, many fields of academia, and social work. Would all that be unfair to men?