Switzerland discriminating against men on pension benefits, ECHR finds

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63217557

by kpetermeni • 4 years ago

82 31 4 years ago

pyuser5835• 4 years ago

And apparently the ECHR had no problem with Switzerland denying women the right to vote … so WTF?

CodeSgt2• 4 years ago

Women have been able to vote in Switzerland for, what, 30 years now? A bit behind a lot of other countries for sure, but let's not act like that has or should have any bearing on this subject of this post.

woodruffw• 4 years ago

I think the GP's comment is meant to preempt the normal HN comment chum on these topics, i.e. the tendency for HN to go out of its way to claim reactionary sex-based discrimination against men. Given that Switzerland has had universal suffrage for barely longer than I've been alive, it's hard to make that claim about them.

(This instead seems to be good old-fashioned sex-based discrimination, like the draft in the US.)

pyuser5835• 4 years ago

The fact that Swiss women didn’t vote until (relatively) recently is not important.

The fact that the were subject to ECHR jurisdiction is.

The ECHR has immense respect for countries political processes, and allows all sorts of nasty laws (gay marriage bans, etc).

My point is that this sort of micromanagement does not seem consistent with the ECHRs usual hands-off approach.

calvinmorrison• 4 years ago

1971 it's burned into my brain

SamReidHughes• 4 years ago

I would assume that's because they never ratified the first protocol, so Article 14 wouldn't apply to elections.

pyuser5835• 4 years ago

Thank you!

Rebelgecko2• 4 years ago

Switzerland also recently stopped using gender as a factor in determining retirement age

mc32• 4 years ago

This is about whether a pensioner is a widow or widower -where a widow gets her pension for life in the event of the husband's death, but a widower only receives it if they have children under 18 and stop receiving it once their children become adults.

danielfoster• 4 years ago

Note the word “also” in the original comment.

ruuda• 4 years ago

How recently? I remember there was a referendum to make the age equal in 2017 or 2018, but the proposal was rejected at the time.

delroth• 4 years ago

Last month. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/pension-reform-vote-targets-rai...

bearmode• 4 years ago

Lots of countries are discriminating against men - just look as the discrepancy between maternity and paternity leave.

Fire-Dragon-DoL• 4 years ago

I was HORRIFIED when I discovered that in Italy, fathers get 4 days of PTO (recently doubled, up from TWO), compared to 1 (or 2,can't remember) months for the mother. Of course there is a difference in physical impact, but 4 days versus 30 feels like a joke. I'm glad I moved to a different country before having children. As a dad, I wanted to stay with my children as much as possible, especially as soon as they were born. I was seriously sleep deprived (2 hours per week sleep deprived) for almost 1 month, until we figured out a few tricks.

This law reminds me of that. All these laws should be realigned.

Switzerland discriminating against men on pension benefits, ECHR finds

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