Women still under-represented in Swiss public places

One of the renamed streets in Lausanne now commemorates Anna Gölden, the Swiss housemaid who was the last woman in Europe to be executed for witchcraft. © Keystone / Jean-christophe Bott

The Swiss city of Neuchâtel on Friday inaugurates a square named after a female writer, but women are still largely in the minority in the public space, reports Swiss public broadcaster, RTS.

The Agota Kristof Square in Neuchâtel is named after a Hungarian-born female writer from the city. With Agota Kristof, six women will now be commemorated in a city with over 400 streets or squares. This is two more than in 2019, the year of the women’s strike which drove a desire for change.

Since 2019, several Swiss cities have stepped up efforts to reach better balance of women’s and men’s representation in public spaces. RTS, which focused on French-speaking Switzerland, reported that in 2019, only 7% of streets in that part of the country were named after women.

There has been slow progress, but there is still a long way to go to achieve balance, says RTS. In French-speaking Switzerland, the city that has made the most progress is Geneva. Now 40 streets are “feminine”, double the number in 2019. The movement is ongoing, as 16 name changes will be proposed this year.

Lausanne has also made progress, with nine streets and squares now named after women, compared with three in 2019. That city has a target of at least 30 streets by 2026, according to Florence Germond, Lausanne’s municipal councillor in charge of equality issues.

Cities in other parts of Switzerland have also made similar moves. Zurich, for example, woke up on International Women’s Day 2019 to find street names temporarily changed overnight from men’s to women’s, sparking an ongoing push for better balance.

The movement has also coincided with a push to review public spaces named after men with racist views or ties to slavery. For example, in June 2019 Neuchâtel renamed a public space honouring racist scientist Louis Agassiz after Tilo Frey, the first black woman in the Swiss parliament.