14 June marks the date of the “Grève féministe” in Switzerland, the national feminist strike. This year, according to the organisers, more than 300,000 people took to the streets across the country: Lausanne, Geneva, Bern, Zurich, Neuchâtel, Fribourg, Sion and Yverdon. The colour is purple, the placards are direct, and the event has something that does not exist in Spain in the same format or on the same date.
The tradition has a specific date of origin. On 14 June 1981, the principle of equality between men and women was enshrined in the Federal Constitution. Ten years later, on 14 June 1991, more than 500,000 women went on strike to demand that this equality also be applied to wages, the division of domestic labour and protection against violence. It was historic, and the date became etched in memory. In 2019, it returned with similar force. And this year, the G7 summit in Evian provided the backdrop, with marches combining feminist demands and international protest.
Some of yesterday’s highlights: in Zurich, around 300 people blocked trams at Paradaplatz for over half an hour. The police used tear gas to clear the tracks. In Valais, the feminist collective renamed several streets after historic Valaisan women, because in the whole canton there are only two streets named after women, and both are saints. In Lausanne, the procession set off from Place Saint-François, which had been renamed “Sainte-Françoise” by the demonstrators for the occasion.
For many Spanish women living here, 14 June comes as a surprise the first time around. In Spain, the key date is 8 March. Here there is another day, with a different history, and a very Swiss style of mobilisation: organised, taking place across the whole country at the same time, and with a central slogan that then branches out into thousands of local variations. You can choose to take part or not, agree with everything or just part of it. What’s difficult is not to realise it exists.