NEWS CENTER – According to the Swiss Union of Trade Unions (USS), hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to defend their rights in all major cities of Switzerland on the occasion of the women’s strike. Equal pay was at the center of their demands. In a press release on Wednesday evening, the USS announced that more than 300,000 people had joined the strike.
According to the police 25 thousand people, according to the organizers 40 thousand people in Zurich, 50 thousand people in Bern according to the organizers, and 30 thousand people in Geneva took part in the feminist strike in Lausanne.
Four years ago, on 14 June 2019, there was the biggest social mobilization since the 1918 general strike. According to the USS, half a million people participated in the 2019 strike. A wave of purple, the color of the women’s strike, first took to the streets and then to parliament during the federal elections. Never before had so many women been elected to Parliament in a federal election.
A number of advances have been made in sexual criminal law reform over the past four years, including a new definition of rape, prevention of domestic violence, paternity leave and equality in gender medicine.
But those leading the strike say there is still plenty of reason to act. These include raising the retirement age, sexist and sexual violence, feminicide (femicide), wage inequality, structural racism, non-financing of childcare facilities, homo-, bi- and transphobic discrimination, and attacks on the right to abortion.
