Well, my company (30 people) has NO managers, male or female! (I HATE managers, regardless of gender).

Tom

3% ? You must be joking ! It rather is between 43% and 63% !! Unless you mean the top-top-top strata of chairmen and CEOs of big corporations which indeed still is a male domain admittedly. But please check up the dragons in their frontrooms

While women are treated differently by agencies such as banks and are allowed to be paid less for doing the same job then they are only equal in theory not in reality. The official "equal" rights of which you speak are just vapour dreams.

Let's put the shoe on the other foot. If I, as the man, choose to stay at home, then the discrimination against women actually has a real and tangible effect on me and my family. After all, if my wife doesn't make as much as a man for doing the same job, then I am being punished. The traditionalist line that one hears about protecting the mans ability to earn for his family is obviously crap as there is still one primary earner for one family. And this is what is ruining it for all of us. If the person best qualified to be the primary earner in a family is the wife and yet she can't do it as well as her husband simply by virtue of the fact that she doesn't have a Y chromosome then the family unit is damaged by that loss of income. The same applies if the wrong person ends up as the primary caregiver. Not all men are suited to the world of high end corporate dealing and not all women are best suited to be home makers and primary care givers. It would be better for society in general if a family in a position to decide these matters was actually left to do what was best for themselves. Because, in the long run society benefits from happier families and mentally better adjusted children. At least in my world view it would be better. Maybe someone has a vested interest in not seeing this happen but that seems pretty paranoid.

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You blew it big time

I was talking about leadership, not "manager of hot beverage serving during meetings"- type of "managers".

French banks in this area are not much better, probably due to Swiss influence - I just discovered that even though our bank knows very well, where most the money is coming from, I only have internet bank access to our current account, whereas my husband has access to all our joint savings accounts as well. Of course the little wifey only needs money for grocery shopping and does not need to worry her pretty little head about those other complicated money matters

A) I was NOT talking about "managers of hot beverages served during meetings " I was talking about managers doing the actual decisions, and this fairly often rather means CEOs instead of laid-back chairmen or operations-managers upfront and not off-realities chaps somewhere up in the air.
B) "French banks" ?? You mean banks in "la France provincielle" like Elsass-Lothringen and Bourgogne ? But are you aware of the fact the "la France Profonde" is a rather conservative territory ? Those French banks do NOT need "Swiss influence", really not, as many of the French banks have their basis in what I would call "deep basic France" !!!
C) French and Swiss bank-employees using regulations and laws of both their banks and their countries will
- address correspondence for a woman to the name/address of HER
- NOT give info to a man just because he sounds authoritative

Then why did neither of these things happen? Correspondence was never addressed to my wife even though we called the bank on this issue. Neither was I given control over my wife's debit cards because I sound authoritative. I am not that authoritative. Just because I have a Y chromosome.

If these assumptions are not true then how does one explain the seeming inconsistencies between the preceding statements and what has actually happened in reality, eg. the one that I lived whilst there.

Hello everyone,

I am a new person in this forum and I started work in an architectural company near Geneva in June. I am a female architect in her thirties, experienced in working in Ireland, the UK and Central Europe before. I worked with many female professionals, both architects and civil engineers and I learned a lot from them. In my career I had two female bosses, in Poland and Ireland and they were excellent professionals, particularly my Irish boss- a brilliant lady, thanks to whom I could still work even when recession started in 2008. For me it was always obvious that there were always highly skilled female professionals...until I arrived in Switzerland.
For a first time in my career, during job interviews from potential Swiss employers I heard questions as follows: "are you married?", "have you got a child?", ,"how old are you?". I am single, without children but I found their questions brazen. My current employer didin't ask me like that but in our office, with 13 architectural workforce excluding bosses, there are only 2 female architects- myself and a colleague in her late 40s. There is also a female student "stagiaire" and a newly graduated female interior designer. While most of our male colleagues, including young technicians are married and have children, we four ladies are single and childrenless! Of course, a madam HR director has a family. Are married women in Switzerland being considered as less responsible or untrustworthy in the workplace? Recently I got a new job interview and was asked about the family. In the UK or Ireland many female architects have children and are given a chance to work full-time even for a very demanding bosses. Highly demanding Zaha Hadid employs married female architects in London.

Perhaps they asked because if you have children, taxes change, the company fronts child money, and there is extra legal work to sort out. Perhaps also they want to know if there will be parental things coming up, emergencies, and so on...I don't think it has anything to do with work ethic or anything like that...but I am speculating here.

angelbutler, many thanks for your opinion.
Most companies, regardless of a country, perceive the employment of parents, particularly women, as a burden but some companies are prepared to cope with it during and after the recruitment process and treat single and married employees equally. While the others will cut a corner and reject a female married professional almost automatically. It depends of a company's culture but I have a feeling that in Switzerland, a woman, particularly with a family, has less chances to get a job, much less than in the UK, Ireland or in the States. Probably because women in those countries stood up for themselves decades ago and told firmly the employers that having children wouldn't hinder them from being a competent and effective employee.
I think that even a single woman in her 30s or 40s, who applies for a job in Switzerland, faces rejection longer that her male peer- married or unmarried. I experienced that before I found a job. I sent a lot of CV's and even these companies who were looking for employees, sent me an answer as follows: "despite of your excellent experience we cannot offer you a position". When I asked them to provide me a genuine reason of rejection, they have never answered.

I'm pretty sure that in the UK it is illegal (certainly unwise) to ask a female job applicant whether or not she is married, or has children.
This could potentially be used in a claim of discrimination against the employer.
The law is obviously not the same here in Switzerland.

Your explanation to me justifies them asking after you've been offered a position, not before it.

No kidding. Age is usually the first non-work related question, followed by marriage and kids.

It does work differently here, true. I am a living proof, though, that in certain fields, the system will go out of its way to help you out and take you on board, especially if they do have exactly the info that other countries do not want to have prior hiring.

I think it has got to do with specialization, edu within the field, how many years of experiences, etc. and the "controversial" info on top. I can't talk about the technical jobs and careers, but edu has been an animal of its own sort in this. It might be that traditionally girls have been offered some ways of career, boys other, and when you as a new comer do not correspond with this division, the system might freeze.

For HRs not getting back to you with info why you haven't been chosen, please, search for threads here that deal with HR response in hiring process, it will be more clear (and gender immune).

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This is true Argent.
Switzerland remains, in many ways, a very classic society.
Many women still stop working when they have children and it's almost expected (though not blatantly said, except perhaps by a mother in law )
There really isn't much infrastructure to help working mothers in terms of childcare either.

So from an employers point of view, some of them might feel (and they are incorrect) that any investment in a young woman will be lost because she'll stop to have a child and/or take an extended maternity leave and/or not return.

It's not easy, but in my opinion, it's reality.

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A) why did it not happen ?
Because the manager in charge in that bank most presumable gave instructions always to use the name of the husband
--- and because very often, only the name of the husband is mentioned on the entrances and postboxes of houses
B) That husbands have access to the debit cards of their wifes not only still is fairly common, it until the 1950ies even was law in Switzerland, and much of the procedures of the banks is based on guidelines of well before 1960
C) I still remember a Miss C..... being infuriarated when she had heard our boss telling a colleague on the phone "...... look, to me, women in office are just aides ....." . Miss C. gave notice not long after that which most of us found regrettable but understandable. This is 40 years ago, but the attitudes need a century to change really

I a while ago spoke with a woman who worked as a truck driver in a trucking company and was angry that the men there earned more. I questioned her and found out that she had been employed as a "courier driver" and thought this was good, not realising that a "courier driver" is just a van-driver, one category BELOW a real truck driver. And this was after the turn of the century. Which means that while decisions on progress go through fairly swiftly, them becoming effect in daily life takes a bit longer. I in past decades witnessed progress pushed forward by my grandfathers to become reality, but when progress initiated by the generation of my parents and mine become actual reality in daily life I will either be very old or long gone

It's not directly relevant - but how does that work‽ Sounds like a great system, but who sets salaries, etc?

On topic - think there's any value in the view that the Swiss are similarly reactive etc. to people in e.g. rural UK but less prone to hiding those views where they fear trouble for venting them?

Very correct. I would also add, that if they do continue working, they will do so at 80% or less to try to accomodate the crazy school schedule, but generally this alone drives them out of the workforce permantly. The defacto part-time status results in lower pay, slower career path, and often other inequalities (e.g. bonus, promotion, advancement, etc.)