Pioneer in democracy, rear-guard in women’s rights. Swiss women in public church office – between the mills of law and justice

Berlis, Angela (2019). Pioneer in democracy, rear-guard in women’s rights. Swiss women in public church office – between the mills of law and justice (Unpublished). In: Ecclesiastical History Society. Winter Meeting, The Church and the Law. Institute of Historical Research, London. 12.1.2019.

In October 1918, the first two reformed women were ordained in the city of Zurich. While the church council and the cantonal synod were in favour of them becoming the first female pastors in the Landeskirche (the reformed church is one of three privileged churches in the canton of Zurich), the law of the canton hindered the recognition of women in a public office as «Pfarrerin». The two women in Zurich and in other cantons had to remain «Pfarrhelferinnen» («female helpers of the congregation»). The next women in Zurich would be only ordained in 1963. At that time, the civil voting rights for women in Switzerland had still to come (in 1971), but times had begun to change. The contribution explore how civil law and church law in Switzerland were connected and how they hindered women on their way to their voting rights in church and state. The longstanding exclusion of women from voting rights in Switzerland both in church and state was not only due to antifeminism but to «a combination of structural and cultural factors» (B. Studer). These included a lack of dramatic political and historical changes such as those in neighbouring countries, which therefore did not function as a force to change Swiss democratic structures.

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