Looking
back from our vantage point of 2016, it seems really odd that American
women did not have the right to vote until 1920. But Switzerland is even
odder. That country became a democracy long ago, with the first citizen
balloting held in the year 1291. But that was for adult men only. Women
in Switzerland didn’t have the right to vote until 1971. And even then,
many women could only vote in national elections. Some cantons held
women back from voting in local elections until ordered by the Swiss
federal court in 1991!
The Swiss move very slowly.
That’s their way. For centuries, husbands had legal authority over their
wives’ savings. “In the 1970s, I had a bank account in my son’s name. I
tried to go and buy something, and they told me I needed the signature
of my man,” a woman told London’s Independent. She was furious. But that
was the law. It wasn’t changed until a national referendum in 1985, and
the vote that time was a squeaker: a 4 percent plurality.
Read about
the struggle for women’s suffrage in Switzerland at Curiously Krulwich.
Looking
back from our vantage point of 2016, it seems really odd that American
women did not have the right to vote until 1920. But Switzerland is even
odder. That country became a democracy long ago, with the first citizen
balloting held in the year 1291. But that was for adult men only. Women
in Switzerland didn’t have the right to vote until 1971. And even then,
many women could only vote in national elections. Some cantons held
women back from voting in local elections until ordered by the Swiss
federal court in 1991! 
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