Room in parliament honours first female Swiss ambassador

Francesca Pometta was Switzerland's ambassador to the UN in New York, where it now has a non-permanent seat on the Security Council. ©keystone/peter Schneider

On the eve of International Women's Day, March 8, Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis has inaugurated a room in the Swiss parliament building named after Francesca Pometta, who became the country's first female ambassador in 1977.

“She was a trailblazer who paved the way for women in the Swiss diplomatic service,” said a foreign ministry press releaseExternal link on Tuesday.

Diplomatic careers were not available to women until 1955 when the entrance exam was first introduced, it explains. Francesca Pometta (1926-2016) was the first woman to take the exam in 1957. She subsequently served as head of the Swiss mission to the United Nations in New York between 1982 and 1987, before becoming Switzerland’s first ambassador to Italy, where she served from 1987 to 1991.

Since then, women have become increasingly important to Swiss diplomacy, according to the foreign ministry. To date, women have headed 76 of Switzerland’s 115 bilateral and multilateral representations (embassies and permanent missions to international organisations), it says.

Paying tribute to Pometta, foreign minister Cassis said she was a “great champion of multilateralism and Switzerland’s place at the heart of the UN system” throughout her career. “Now that Switzerland is serving as a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, paying tribute to Francesca Pometta takes on a special significance,” he added.