So, Switzerland was one of the last countries where women gained the right to vote, though it was not the last one. Excluding those that – you know – do not vote or don't have hardly any women as citizens and do not vote like the Vatican, Liechtenstein was actually the last country in Europe to do so in 1984.
But while in the case of Liechtenstein, this relates to the fact that their structures are not as democratic elsewhere and their ruler has way too much power, in Switzerland the reason it took so long is due to their direct democratically political structure and due to the fact that Switzerland as the every neutral country they are has not undergone and experienced the major political shift or revolution other countries have undergone at the beginning of the 20th century. Take it's neighbors: Austria, Germany, and Italy all underwent what can only be classified as a political revolution at the end of WWI and it was very much within that context, and political movements like the Social Democrats which had been previously fighting the old order gaining power that women received the right to vote. France took considerably longer but them introducing women's suffrage in 1945 was also preceded by what arguably can be seen as civil war and a sort of political revolution.
Switzerland had had a suffrage movement dating back to the 19th century. While its 1848 constitution did introduce a federal structure that was decidedly very, very federalist as opposed to centrist and provided the groundwork for the political system of Switzerland, it was interpreted in a way that suffrage only extended to males (the constitution says "All Swiss are equal before the law" but the reason why they didn't extend this to women was because, well, they interpreted it that way and also because several Kantons did connect the right to vote with previously having served in the Swiss armed forces – something women were not allowed to do).
Anyways, in 1866 a first petition was filed to extend the right to vote to women and many organizations and women campaigned in the following years for the right to suffrage. And they did make progress. In 1874 a first revision with regards to women was accepted that lead to civil right equality (meaning they were able to legally own property and so forth) but not the right to vote.
The first major chance for change came in 1922 when several Kantons held referenda about women's suffrage and these were rejected and here is also where we come to the specifics of the Swiss political system. While Switzerland has a parliament, a lot of their political decisions are made either on the level of federal states, the Kantons, or through public referenda, where the voters are presented with options to vote over.
For a change of the constitution, such as women's suffrage, it requires both: A majority of the popular vote in a referendum as well as a majority of the votes of the Kantons. How the Kantons figure out how they vote in such matters was for the majority of the 20th century, up to them. They could hold referenda, they could let their representatives decided or just draw straws for all that matters (they did not draw straws though).
So, in essence, while there probably would have been a majority for women's suffrage at least at some points in time or at least in some Kantons, overall, the introduction of women's suffrage in Swizerland required the male population to vote for it in a referendum. And like the general dynamic of asking people to share power, there was for a long time a very decided anti-women's suffrage standpoint among the male voters.
The Swiss League against women's suffrage, a 1920s organization, said as much when they argued that equal voting rights for women and women's equality in general are ideas "imported from foreign countries" and that "Swiss women are not interested in such frivolities".
Anyways, after the Second World War the Swiss political landscape and culture did change a bit. What first pushed the idea forward was a referendum over the possibility for women to take part in a civil protection corps (like doing stuff for the military in case of an invasion) and the inclusion of the Social Democrats in the Swiss federal government, which pushed women's rights forward.
So, in 1959 a referendum on women's suffrage was held and 67% of the popular vote and almost all of the Kantons save 3 voted no. This reinvigorated the women's suffrage movement that during WWII had somewhat lost its steam. This team, also catholic women's organizations took part and while further inroads were made, what really lead to the final push necessary for women's suffrage is the 1968 students movement and radical feminist politics.
In the wale of 1968 protests erupted all over the country instigated by radical feminist organizations who had split from previous women's suffrage organizations and in 1969 staged a demonstration of 5000 people in the Swiss capital, Bern. Now, 5000 doesn't sound like much but for Swiss conditions this was huge. And the government became shaken by this. When more conservative organization also started supporting some of the house-occupying, public protesting radical feminists, the government saw itself backed into a corner while under the impression of the massive cultural changes of the late 60s and early 70s, which all over Europe made young and younger people more receptive to social and political change after the stuffy atmosphere of post-WWII Europe the population in Switzerland was much more receptive to the idea of women's suffrage.
After some to and fro between the Bundesrat, the Nationrat and the Ständerat (the various parliaments and representative chambers in Switzerland) a new referendum was held in 1971 65% of the popular vote voted for women's suffrage while 15 ½ Cantons (there are Cantons that only count for half a vote) voted yes against 6 ½ Cantons that voted no. And thus, women's suffrage was introduced in Switzerland.
In all of Switzerland? No, one bastion of the detractors of women's suffrage still held out in form of the Kanton Appenzell Innerrhoden (also Appenzell Außerrhoden but they weren't the last ones). Appenzell Innerrhoden, a very rural and conservative Kanton, refused to adopt the law and waged a legal and political battle against women's suffrage until they finally relented in 1990 when they were sued in front of the Federal Court of Switzerland.
As for causing controversy, this for the most part exceeds my expertise but one thing where this caused problems is when Switzerland tried to become part of the European Human Rights Declaration in the late 1960s, since that Declaration includes explicit reference to universal suffrage. So, this took until 1974 because essentially, Switzerland violated the European Human Rights Convention.
But in terms of why it took so long: The main reason is a political system that enables a group in power to directly vote on sharing these votes with others and as such things are often wont to turn out, this majorly frustrated the extension of basic democratic human rights to over half of the population of Switzerland until a major culture change came along and was promoted in radical ways by feminists.
Sources:
My main source was
but there is also
According to Orson Wells in The Third Man, the only interesting thing Switzerland has ever produced is the Cuckoo's clock. No doubt he's wrong. Switzerland has developed at least two other things of interest to the outside world, or at least of interest to political scientists and historians. Political scientists (and I include myself among them) usually study its political system. The Swiss have a highly decentralized and very direct form of democracy, which means that constitutional changes, like granting women the right to vote, can only happen through referenda that carry broad support throughout the electorate. This process can be very slow. For example, they only legalized abortion in 2002. This is how women’s suffrage is often explained too; the Swiss are relatively conservative and it takes a hell of a long time to convince relatively conservative people that women should have the right to vote too. But, as I mentioned at the start of this vote, historians have a different reason for caring about Switzerland; its position of neutrality in the European theater, specifically during World War One and World War Two. So I will put on my historian hat and try to explain some of the conservatism.
Why this matters requires a little context. Traditionally, (very broadly speaking) life was divided in a public and a private sphere. The public sphere, including work, trade and politics, was an affair for men, while the household was the domain of women. In politics, men represented not just themselves, but their households in politics. One of the earliest letter writing campaigns in the USA was organized by women, who referred to themselves by their husband’s, not their own, names; “Mrs. Wadsworth, Mrs. Thomas Chester” (p. 221, Innskeep 2015). Votes were tied to property, to the house and the household. Women’s suffrage was out of the question, because women already had a vote and a voice, in the form of their husband’s. This was obviously not without controversy and this logic was often tested both on grounds of consistency (just to pick an example, what happens to a widow who takes over her husband’s estate?) as well as human and constitutional rights (The Swiss constitution declares everybody equal and there is no innate reason why the Swiss concept of “elector” has to be gender specific) as well as basic decency (WTF nations who claim to be democratic?). There were many suffragettes and other social movements in different shapes and forms all over the world who tried to change this logic and got pretty close on several occasions. I do by no means want to underplay their efforts and the foundations it created for the changes that were to come, but in politics, the traditional logic held for decades after these movements started. Women belonged to the home, were unfit for public life and above getting their hands dirty in politics.
The First and Second World War upended this logic completely. As men went off the fight, women all of the sudden played a visible role in keeping the country (not just the home) running. The idea that women could only function in the private sphere and should not get their hands dirty lost much of its potency, at least when it came to voting.
If women could work in munitions factories, it seemed both ungrateful and illogical to deny them a place in the polling booth. But the vote was much more than simply a reward for war work; the point was that women's participation in the war helped to dispel the fears that surrounded women's entry into the public arena. (Hume 2016)
This is one of the major reasons that the women’s right to vote was so broadly accepted after World War One.
How does this trend effect Switzerland, a country that is proud of its neutrality? However great in other regards, neutrality has downsides too. Men don’t have to be forced to die in foreign countries, women don’t have to leave the house to manufacture weapons. So, if you’re neutral, women don’t leave the private sphere and don’t earn the vote. Now of course women played a very large part in keeping Switzerland functional during wartime. They were called upon to “protect democracy” (the irony was not lost on many of them) and joined the military’s support services. But the situation was not as extreme and the change not as jarring as had been seen in for example the UK.
Furthermore, as mentioned before, Switzerland is a fairly direct democracy. Of course there is also a constitutional court which could have made (and eventually did make) a ruling, but judges are elected by politicians and law is by nature conservative. This meant that, despite the constitution not clearly laying out why women couldn’t vote, the courts did not grant women the right because they traditionally did not vote because they had not had the right. So the only way that women could get suffrage was through a referendum, in which only men could vote. With Switzerland having had less of a revolution in the perception of gender roles than other modern democracies, this made change hard.
The event that did help change this public perception was a 1957 referendum on whether women had to join the military like men did. Now, in a Valais, the community took this to the logical conclusion and allowed women to vote for this specific proposal. Why? First of all, it’s crazy to forcibly enlist people in the military without giving them a political voice (it’s one of the reasons the voting age became 18 during the Vietnam-era), and secondly, if voting is a right of citizens and you become a citizen by being involved in its defense (which is a large part of Swiss citizenship), forcing women to defend the country makes them citizens. So it became clear that the logic was starting to break down.
It took some time for this to trickle through the system. The women’s vote for the referendum on their enlistment was annulled, but a few years later in 1959 a nationwide referendum was held on women’s right to vote. It failed nationally, but gained traction and passed in a few French speaking cantons. Like in the USA, where women’s suffrage in specific states helped get it on the national agenda, as soon as women become involved in local politics it changes women’s suffrage from a moral question (should women be allowed to vote?) to a strategic vote (how do I get women to vote for me?), spreading its support among the political elite and the rest of the country. By 1971, it had become a broadly accepted proposition that women should get the vote and 66% of Swiss men voted for women’s enfranchisement on a federal level. On a local level, progress was slower. One half canton held out until 1990, when it was forced by the courts to let women vote. Luckily, by this time women had a proud, if relatively short, tradition of actually voting in Swiss elections, meaning custom had finally changed.
Sources:
I’ll get to this tomorrow morning, I'll give full citations and some more links. Right now, I really want to sleep.
It seems, all previous responses got removed. I'll attempt another one aiming at the first question.
I am a Swiss Historian. The history of female voting is not my specialty, but I think I am able to shed some light on this.
Switzerland works as a direct democracy. This means there had to be a public vote to allow women the right to vote. For obvious reasons, only men were allowed to vote. And legally, also a majority of the Swiss provinces (-> called "Cantons") had to vote yes. For historical reasons, the majority of the Swiss Cantons is rural and generally voting conservative.
The first public vote was taken in 1959. 67% (of the men) voted no and only 3 cantons voted yes. This really shaked up the women and a new movement was born. The big achievement of this movement was to rally all the women's organizations behind the the idea of voting rights for women and to get into a situation where none of the political parties dared to oppose the rights to vote for women anymore.
In 1971, there was another public vote and this time it passed with 66% yes and 15 ½ cantons yes against 6 ½ cantons no (yes, we have provinces that only count half. Feel free to ask about details of this. Switzerland's democracy can be quite funny). Here is a map of the this vote: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frauenstimmrecht_in_der_Schweiz#/media/File:Frauenstimmrecht_1971_de.svg
The NO-cantons are the typical conservative central Swiss cantons with one or two exceptions and then more Swiss German rural cantons with a very conservative profile while the cantons dominated by big cities and generally all French speaking cantons voted yes (Saint Gall seems to be an exception to this city rule, but the dominance of the city can be said to be less strong in that case).
So that's the legal part. Now why did it take so long? The general idea we learned at University is, that the direct democracy is a major factor in this. Men had to give up half of their power in order to allow the women to vote. The same effect can be seen in Switzerland joining the UN only in 2002 (despite Geneva being the European seat of the UN since it's foundation). Then secondly, Switzerland did not take part in the World Wars. Instead, traditional values were growing stronger (the role of women was again focused on the household) and the general political climate was more and more conservative until around 1959 when the government opened up to include social democrats (Switzerland traditionally has a big coalition government covering 80-90% of the seats in the parliament. Feel free to ask followup questions on this. Switzerland's democracy can be quite funny, as I said) and the society started to change.
Source: http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D10380.php
You may want to look at the photos in the source. Classical images of Swiss political propaganda everybody around here knows from textbooks...
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