For women of the Swiss Socialist Party, the yes “is not only a big step back in terms of equality, it is a slap for all women”. They announced a demonstration in Bern on Monday to denounce the result.
Le Monde with AFP
This was a ballot marked by a deep cleavage between the German -speaking part of the Alpine country, favorable to the reform, and the other cantons. The Swiss narrowly voted in favor of lengthening the retirement age for women at 65. The yes barely won with only 50.6 % of the vote, according to the final results published on Sunday September 25.
After two attempts aborted in 2004 and in 2017, Berne therefore collected enough votes to apply his plan intended to “stabilize” the Swiss old age insurance system, subject to enormous pressure, while life expectancy Increases and that the generation of baby boomers reaches the age of leaving working life.
The most controversial part of the reform requires that, like men, women work up to 65, before being able to claim a full -rate pension. One year more than now. The Parliament approved, in 2021, the key measures of the pension reform, which also includes an increase in VAT (adopted at 55 %, Sunday).
“A slap for all women”
For women of the Swiss Socialist Party (PSS), the yes “is not only a big step back in terms of equality, it is a slap for all women”. They announced a demonstration in Bern on Monday to denounce the result. Opponents of the reform had stressed the wage discrimination which continues to strike women and believe that it is unfair to increase retirement age for them without first resolving these inequalities.
The partisans of the yes stressed that asking women to work one more year is not unreasonable in view of economic and demographic data. In 2020, women in Switzerland received an average of almost 35 % of their male counterparts below 35 %, according to the Swiss Ministry of Economy.
“Dividing the country on such a subject is not a good policy. This will leave traces,” said the president of the Swiss union union (USS), Pierre-Yves Maillard on Sunday, stressing the gap With the German -speaking cantons, but also fearing an increase in tension between men and women, as well as between social classes.
For the vice-president of the Swiss UDC (radical right), Céline Amaudruz, this yes is “a first step to ensure the sustainability” of old age insurance. “For us, equality is not an à la carte menu.”
no ban on intensive farming
Furthermore, a popular initiative scrutinized close abroad, which was trying to have intensive farming banned, was largely rejected, with 63 % of votes against. This proposal would have essentially eradicated industrial farms in a country which is still very rural even if agriculture weighs relatively little in national wealth. The Swiss estimated that the well-being of rent animals was already respected in the Alpine country.
Government, Parliament and organizations representative of breeders were firmly opposed to the initiative. According to the laws in force, farms cannot keep more than 1,500 pigs to fattening, 27,000 chickens of flesh or 300 calves, which excludes the gigantic industrial farms found in other countries.
Bern had also warned that these new rules would lead to a significant price increase, while the import clause could have an impact on relations with business partners.
Despite the massive refusal, it is nevertheless a victory for Vera Weber, the president of the Franz Weber Foundation of Nature and Animals. It salutes the fact that the text has allowed Switzerland to discuss the problem of intensive farming and meat consumption.