When Swiss universities pioneered gender equality – Expat Guide to Switzerland
At the end of the 19th century, young women from all over the world came to study in Switzerland. They contributed to the development of medicine, law, philosophy and other sciences in Switzerland and in their home country.
In the heart of Bern, near the train tracks and the old university building, there is a short street called “Tumarkinweg”. It was named after the Russian philosopher in 2000 Anna Tumarkin (1875-1951). Originally from Dubrowna (now Belarus, formerly part of the Russian Empire), Anna came to Bern in 1892 at the age of 17 to study philosophy. She followed in the footsteps of her brother, who was studying mathematics in the Swiss capital. She later earned her place in history as the first female professor in Europe authorized to supervise and examine doctoral students.
The German word “path‘, meaning ‘path’, can be seen here not only as a geographic name but also as a symbol – that of an ambitious woman paving the way to higher education for others like her. Tumarkin was among the first of many women, many from Eastern Europe and Russia, to come to Switzerland to study at the turn of the century.
She was joined by others including Ida Hof (1880-1952), also from the former Russian Empire. Hoff studied medicine and became a doctor. She was one of the first people in Bern to buy a car that she drove herself, at a time when most were chauffeur driven.
When Hoff opened her own practice in 1911, there were 132 general practitioners in Bern, only four of whom were women. She and Tumarkin moved into the same house. The nature of their relationship has been described as “friendship and lifelong partnership”.
Other pioneers in academia include Swiss Emile Kempin-Spyri, who became the first woman to earn a degree in Swiss law in 1887 and later founded a law school in New York, and Marie Heim-Vögtlin, another Swiss from Canton Aargau who one was the first woman to study medicine in Switzerland. She later co-founded the country’s first gynecological clinic.
Swiss exception
While most European countries expanded their universities from the mid-19th century, Switzerland is notable for allowing female students to sit side by side with male students.
In German-speaking Switzerland there were already three universities in Switzerland. The oldest, the University of Basel, was founded in 1460; the University of Zurich was founded in 1833 and the University of Bern in 1834. The French-speaking part of the country also had a strong network, with Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel and Friborg all following and opening their own universities in the course of the 19th century.
While the UK preferred to separate men and women by establishing single-sex colleges such as Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford and Girton College in Cambridge, which were for women only, the University of Zurich welcomed female students as early as 1868. Bern and Geneva did so in 1872. The Swiss universities quickly attracted ambitious girls from wealthy families from other European countries. They came to study mathematics, medicine, natural sciences, psychology or law.
By 1900, almost all female students at Swiss universities were foreign, and up to 80% came from the former Russian Empire, where many intellectuals, including the writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky, pushed for equal access to education for women. “By sincerely and fully allowing higher education for women, with all the rights that accompany it, Russia would again take a great and unique step ahead of all of Europe in the great cause of human renewal…” he wrote Vremya, a Russian literary and political magazine.
In 1906, a quarter of the academics worldwide came from Switzerland. They came to a country with a well-developed tertiary education network, which offered rare learning opportunities for women at the time.
Her avant-garde choice was not easy. Women in Europe, in most cases, were not allowed to travel without their father’s or husband’s permission. This led to many rushed or sham marriages. At a time when women were expected to marry and have children, they also had to deal with social stigma.
What about Swiss women?
But while foreign women viewed Switzerland as a gateway to higher education, Swiss universities remained surprisingly empty of Swiss women. “Despite the rather liberal admissions policies of some universities Swiss women who aspire to higher education have a difficult path ahead of them,” writes researcher Manda Beck in an article published on the Swiss National Museum blog. The universities, while formally defending gender equality, enrolled only local young men. One of the admission requirements was attending high school, which remained taboo for women. Girls’ schools in Switzerland did not offer this program. To get into university and avoid the restrictions, they had to take expensive private courses and sit entrance exams.
“Marie Vögtlin was the first Swiss woman to attend medical school in 1868. This ambitious woman managed to pass the matriculation exam for which she was preparing. With her father’s consent, she obtained the right to matriculate at the University of Zurich. Despite this, the presence of Swiss female students in university lecture halls remained low for a long time, until 1914 when their fellow foreign students predominated», explains Beck.
However, some universities remained closed to girls. The University of Lausanne, for example rejected Swiss women from the canton of Vaud under the pretext that their education is incompatible with that of young men. However, she also accepted women from other cantons.
The bumpy road to equality
By 1915, however, the number of foreign female students in Switzerland had equaled that of Swiss female students. Although educated women were an exception in Switzerland, they were less of a social taboo. The real change in mentality came after World War I, when the conflict forced women into the workforce. Swiss universities gradually lifted their admission restrictions. In the meantime, the war had stopped the flow of Russian female students to Switzerland.
In 1922, Geneva opened its first female gym which provided high school diplomas and enabled girls to apply to universities.
In 1924, the Association Suisse des Femmes Diplômées des Universités (ASFDU) (Swiss Association of Women Academics) was founded in Bern to defend the rights of women academics. This company was headed by Nelly Schreiber-Favre, native of Geneva. She was the first woman to graduate from the Law School of the University of Geneva and later became the city’s first female lawyer. During her studies, her professors laughed at her for being a woman “playing at being a man”.
In competition with male lawyers, she mainly defended female clients and young people. She helped introduce several innovations to the justice system, such as: B. Juvenile Courts; Children have previously been tried as adults. In 1918, Schreiber-Favre initiated the creation of the École sociale pour les femmes (Social School for Women), which became the Haute école de travail social (Geneva Institute for Social Work).
struggle for work
A college degree didn’t always mean work. Many of the foreign women who came to Switzerland stayed in Switzerland to pursue their careers, like Hoff or Tumarkin. According to official statistics, by 1930 most educated women had decided to work in the educational or medical field as doctors, pharmacists or dentists. For example, no one chose to become an engineer. The law also remained largely closed to them.
Some women opened their own practices, as did doctor Hoff. Women with degrees in humanities and science are educated at girls’ schools like Tumarkin. But they were the lucky ones. The reality for most graduates was much grimmer. Career opportunities for women remained limited.
Klara Winnicki was the first woman to study pharmacy in Bern in 1900 and was the first to successfully pass the state examination as a pharmacist. This entitled her to run her own pharmacy. Despite this, she had trouble finding an internship and later an assistant position in a pharmacy. The two pharmacies that she was finally able to open filed for bankruptcy.
obstacle
After the financial crisis of 1929, the labor market for women became even more difficult, despite the further opening of universities to women. Employers preferred to hire men and were more skeptical of women’s abilities. Unemployment was also high.
At that time, Switzerland introduced certain progressive social measures such as unemployment benefits and a national pension system. But the country has also enacted laws excluding married women from the labor market and promoting the motto “one family – one income”. Two-income families were discouraged, especially if the woman in the household worked as a teacher or civil servant. These jobs were often seen as “luxury”.
“Campaigns against dual wage earners never target working men…. or married women working in factories, crafts and farms. Because while the wages of a woman worker undoubtedly served to support the family, the money earned by a married teacher or civil servant symbolizes luxury. These women should therefore leave their well-paying public jobs to men with supporting families.” wrote Erika HebeisenHistorian and curator at the Swiss National Museum, in a blog entry.
The canton of Basel, for example, banned married women from teaching in 1926.
This policy pushed qualified women out of the workforce and had a lasting impact on the social perception of women in Switzerland. By World War II, the first wave of progressive women gave way to college students, who often began but did not complete their studies. Those who did chose not to work. They usually married and devoted themselves to their families. Discouraged by the controversy against women in the workforce, many curbed their career aspirations.
At the beginning of the 20th century, almost 10% of women in Switzerland had a degree. But in 1935 women made up 16% of the student body. This proportion remained stable until the 1960s, when mixed secondary education and women’s access to higher education became widespread. Nowadays even slightly more women than men study: in the academic year 2021/2, they accounted for almost 52% of students at Swiss universities.