How do you make a Swiss woman laugh? Ask her whether Swiss men are good lovers, apparently. In the second of an eight-part weekly series on the Swiss identity, we take a light-hearted look at the evolution of love, sex and relationships in Switzerland between the 1960s and the 1990s.
The Swiss Miracle, presented by Martina Chyba, takes a humorous stroll through the archives of Swiss public television, RTS. The eight issues under the microscope are fashion, love, food, cleanliness, nature, tranquillity, humour and money.
In this episode we discover what couples used to learn in marriage preparation classes (women, get those cook books out) and why the Swiss find it so hard to say “I love you” – “wild romanticism isn’t our cup of tea”. Or as someone else put it, banking secrecy might have been taken away from us, but we’re hanging on to emotional secrecy.
There’s also the art of chatting someone up Eighties style, and the difficulty of finding a partner in the 1970s if you were gay, or “homophile”, as the Swiss apparently used to say.
Bearing in mind that women didn’t get the vote in Switzerland until 1971, the archive footage contains many social attitudes “of their time”, i.e. jaw-droppingly sexist.
(Subtitles translated from French to English by SWISS TXT)
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
‘First time’ at 16 for most Swiss, sex survey finds
This content was published on
A survey has found that 16 was the average age for the first sexual encounter – typically with a condom. One in ten reported having an STD.
This content was published on
But some experts have doubts about whether the report reveals what is really going on between the sheets in Switzerland. The first part of the Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey, by condom maker Durex, was released earlier this week. The online survey questioned more than 26,000 adults of all orientations in 26 countries about their sexual…
This content was published on
Eighteen-year-old Runa Wehrli identifies as bisexual and speaks openly about it, but her orientation isn't always taken seriously by society.
This content was published on
Switzerland’s police and crime prevention agency on Thursday launched a campaign warning the public against fraudulent love on the internet. The country documented more than 16,000 online love scams in 2018. The campaign offers advice on how to recognise and deal with a “love scam”. How do love scams work? Fake profiles are created on social media and platforms…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.