Women in Switzerland have made significant progress in the last 20 years, particularly in the field of higher education. There is now a higher proportion of women than men obtaining a higher education diploma, according to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO).
In 1999, just 9.8% of women aged 25-34 and 14.4% of men of the same age obtained a higher education diploma. In 2019, however, the proportions have risen to 42.3% for young women and 34.7% for men.
More women are also studying subjects that were traditionally male-dominated, such as science, mathematics, statistics, engineering and construction. Choices of study and of profession are less linked to gender than 20 years ago, says the FSO.
Part-time work
Meanwhile, the proportion of women aged 15-64 in paid employment rose from 68.2% in 1991 to 79.9% in 2018. But the rate of full-time working dropped by 10% for both men and women, with more people choosing to work part-time. Some 59% of employed women now work part-time, compared with 17.6% of working men.
In couples with a child under four, the traditional model where the man works full-time and the woman stays at home dropped from 59.2% in 1992 to 23.3% in 2017. The most common model for such families is now a full-time working father and a part-time working mother: the proportion of such cases has risen from around a quarter in 1992 to about a half now.
Housework remains unequally distributed, being carried out mainly by women in more than 70% of families with young children, according to statistics from 2013.
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