SHARE
COPY LINK

MARRIAGE

OPINION: Swiss childcare culture and divorce laws mean women are losing out

The high costs of childcare in Switzerland, the culture for family-based care and recent Federal Court decisions made in the guise of equality all mean that women in Switzerland are at a disadvantage, Clare O’Dea writes.

OPINION: Swiss childcare culture and divorce laws mean women are losing out
Swiss childcare culture and costs and the country's divorce laws mean women are losing out. Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

We don’t think of marriage as an institution that negatively impacts a person’s earning power, but the law has long recognised this feature, taking into account years of unpaid care work and reduced earning capacity in the case of divorce. Now the approach is more cautious.

Previously, settlements between couples were quite traditional, reflecting the model of most families, where one spouse earned most of the family income and one spouse did most of the care and home-related work. 

But recent Swiss Federal Court judgements between 2020 and 2022 reflect a changed approach towards establishing individual financial independence. Now, in normal cases, the lesser-earning spouse is supposed to be able to support herself (mostly wives) fully as soon as possible after divorce.

The principle of financial independence being pushed through on the divorce side ignores the reality for most mothers, who for practical, economic and cultural reasons reduce their – present and future – earning capacity during marriage. Divorced women already had a much higher risk of experiencing poverty than divorced men before this change.

READ ALSO: How do the costs of childcare in Switzerland compare to elsewhere in Europe?

Childcare dynamics

So what’s keeping women in the home? The reluctance of Swiss parents to use external childcare is an interesting phenomenon. Could it be related to the history of poor children forcibly being taken into care or is it simply an expression of conservative values?

Grandparents Day is celebrated on the second Sunday of March in Switzerland. In my local newspaper, the occasion was marked with an article about a grandmother who looks after her two grandchildren up to four day per week. Both her daughters, mothers of the pre-school age children, said they would work less or not at all if they didn’t have this family care arrangement for their children.

The grandmother, who is only 57 years old, has a paid job one day per week. She said she would rather give up that job than miss out on looking after her grandchildren.

This strong preference for family-based care for children is part of the reason why most mothers reduce their working hours significantly after birth. Day care is seen by many parents as less than ideal, an option to be used in small doses to complement family-based or other privately-arranged care.

Added to that cultural barrier, and the short duration of statutory maternity leave (14 weeks), the cost of childcare in Switzerland, which is the second highest of OECD countries, is prohibitive. The net cost of a full-time place in a creche for one child is 26 percent of the average household income of a working couple in Switzerland, second only to New Zealand at 27 percent.

Most OECD members manage to provide childcare that costs less than 15 percent of a couple’s income. Ireland, the UK, New Zealand and Switzerland are the only four countries above the 20 percent mark.

Common problem

Traditional gender-based roles within marriage are alive and kicking in Switzerland. Economically, this is a disadvantage for women, at least on paper. But the disadvantage becomes concrete in the case of divorce. Because when the provider-carer deal is broken, the law is blind to that lack of economic equality.

Divorce is not a rare scenario. The divorce rate in Switzerland was 41.9 percent in 2021 and the average length of marriage at the time of divorce was 15.7 years. A lot can happen in 15.7 years, especially when they are potentially a person’s prime earning years.

The main thrust of the Federal Court decisions on divorce law is a narrowing of the conditions under which the lesser-earning spouse receives maintenance payments. A marriage is no longer automatically considered to be life-shaping (lebensprägend), and therefore creating a right to alimony, just because there are children involved.

The position now is that the spouse who looks after the children during the marriage should stand on their own two feet financially after the marriage ends. This overwhelmingly applies to mothers, most of whom work part-time.

But the change has happened without the necessary progress in the economic situation of women, and as a result, there is now a mismatch between the law and the reality for women.

Poverty trap

The reality is that motherhood in Switzerland usually means losing ground in the workplace, while fatherhood does not. Women generally do more unpaid work at home, whether they have a paid job or not. Most women work part-time and mothers often work in worse-paid jobs than they are qualified for as a result of their interrupted working life.

The net effect of all this is that women are at higher risk of poverty in old age, especially if the provider-carer deal they participate in for several years is shattered by divorce.

I’m all for encouraging women to regain their financial independence after divorce. But not in a way that the structural barriers are ignored.

There are signs of improvement in the area of childcare provision. Full-day schooling is becoming more common, with fewer children needing to return home in the middle of the day. Last September, voters in the city of Zurich approved a plan to offer supervision and a meal to children over the lunch break in all schools by 2025, for instance.

The National Council voted last month in favour of a 710-million-franc package intended to reduce childcare costs for families by 20 percent by 2025. The Council of States, usually more reluctant to spend, still has to vote on the package.

But it will take years for families to actually reap the benefit of these measures, which still only scratch the surface of the problem of economic inequality. In the meantime, women facing divorce need to know that they are on their own, and that neither the state, their ex-partner nor the law will necessarily help them in future. 

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

CLIMATE CRISIS

OPINION: Are the Swiss finally going to get serious on tackling the climate crisis?

Switzerland is particularly vulnerable to the impact of the climate crisis but the Swiss have so far failed to respond adequately to the growing emergency. Clare O’Dea looks at whether a breakthrough is finally on the cards.

OPINION: Are the Swiss finally going to get serious on tackling the climate crisis?

On June 18th, voters will have the chance to accept or reject Switzerland’s climate protection law, which sets out a path to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The referendum to potentially block the law was called by the populist Swiss People’s Party.

Parliament passed this climate law in September 2022 but the conservative right People’s Party quickly gathered enough signatures to call a referendum. The party did the same thing the last time a government plan for climate measures was approved by parliament, winning the argument at the ballot box in June 2021.

Partly as a result of these delays, Switzerland has slipped down several places to 22nd in the Climate Change Performance Index, performing worse than the EU average in the latest rankings. 

As an Alpine country, Switzerland is particularly vulnerable to the impact of the climate crisis, with temperatures rising at twice the global average. Droughts and heatwaves in recent years have accelerated the melting of Swiss glaciers

Read more about the impact of the climate crisis in Switzerland

The new climate protection law takes a rather soft approach to industry and consumers. It has the backing of economic and farming lobby groups, as well as all political parties, bar one. 

But it still plots an ambitious course. Switzerland currently imports three-quarters of its energy needs. The goal is to increase energy independence by pivoting away from imported fossil fuels completely. 

The measures include emission reduction trajectories for industry, transport and buildings, to reduce energy consumption, but the law stops short of introducing any new taxes or bans.

The carrot for homeowners is two billion francs to support the replacement of gas and oil heating systems or electric heaters with cleaner alternatives. Another 1.2 billion francs is promised to companies investing in climate-friendly technologies.

The People’s Party is hoping it can convince voters to torpedo this law, as it managed to do successfully with the more robust “CO2 Law” in 2021. 

The rejection of the CO2 law, which was based on the “polluter pays” principle, came as a shock to the government, because the swing to a narrow “no” (51.6 percent) came near the end of the campaign after a strong start for the “yes” camp. Voters were ultimately swayed by fears of higher costs to their household budgets. 

This aerial picture taken on September 13, 2022 at Glacier 3000 resort above Les Diablerets shows the Tsanfleuron pass free of the ice that covered it for at least 2,000 years next to blankets (L) covering snow from the last winter season to prevent it from melting. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP)

The argument of “an explosion in electricity prices” has been revived for this year’s vote. Concerns about energy security are also front and centre, with the tagline “too extreme and much too expensive”. 

In addition, the perceived negative visual impact on the landscape of renewable energy installations – wind and solar –is being highlighted. 

The issue of energy security is the subject of a recently published white paper by the Energy Science Center at Zurich’s ETH. The modelling shows that “a complete de-carbonaisation of Switzerland’s energy system is compatible with a high degree of energy security under certain conditions.”

What’s needed, according to the research, is a rapid expansion in renewable electricity production and the efficient integration of Switzerland into the European electricity market.

The law being voted on next month is the outcome of the so-called Glacier Initiative which was launched by the Swiss Association for Climate Protection in 2019. It provided for a ban on all fossil fuels by 2050, if there were no “technical alternatives”.

The association withdrew their initiative when they saw the government’s indirect counter proposal. This is a common dynamic in compromise-driven Swiss politics. Activists bring forward a referendum with radical goals that may or may not pass at the ballot box. 

To avoid the risk, the government crafts a compromise or watered-down version of the proposed legislation, which is then accepted by parliament, prompting the initiative committee to drop their campaign. 

The tug of war can be dragged out if there is a third party opposed to the watered-down version; in the current case, Swiss People’s Party. By objecting to the new law, they can reignite the debate and stall the whole process.

The climate debate rumbles on in Switzerland, with some taking a fatalistic view that the country is too small to make any difference, so why bother? 

With the support of Greenpeace, a group of older women known as the KlimaSeniorinnen Schweiz (Senior Women for Climate Protection Switzerland) are bothering – by taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).  

Their aim is to boost climate action in Switzerland through a lawsuit against the government that argues their health, as older people, is being put at risk by government inaction. Theirs was the first such case to come before the ECHR. 

READ ALSO: Climate change ‘transforming Switzerland into Tuscany’

Other more attention-grabbing protests are taking place in Switzerland. Most recently, on May 23rd, a group of 100 protestors from various groups, carried out an action at Geneva airport, targeting private jets that were on display as part of a fair. 

Just before Easter, activists from Renovate Switzerland blocked southbound holiday traffic by glueing themselves to the motorway surface near the entrance of the Gotthard Tunnel.

In another protest last month, a man glued himself to the podium of a televised political debate after local elections in Geneva, to the indignation of the presenter and the crowd, who booed as he was removed. 

Amid the apparent lack of consensus in Switzerland on how or whether to take action against global warming, the upcoming vote on June 18th has the potential to provide some badly-needed direction to the country and its citizens. 

SHOW COMMENTS