The texts were submitted by women lawmakers from all parties except the right-wing Swiss People’s Party.
Keystone-SDA
Incitement to hatred or discrimination on the grounds of gender should be punishable in Switzerland. On Wednesday, the Senate voted 21-18 in favour of six similar parliamentary initiatives to supplement the penal code.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
The texts were submitted by women lawmakers from all parties except the right-wing Swiss People’s Party. They note that hatred and violence against women are unfortunately widespread. Social Democratic senator Mathilde Crevoisier Crelier also highlighted the upsurge in acts of hatred against women, and called for a clear signal to be sent out against such violence.
+ Do women have equal rights in Switzerland?
Adding an additional ground to the criminal anti-discrimination law is not a solution. Current legislation is sufficient. It needs to be better enforced, argued Beat Rieder, of the Centre Party, for the committee. He was opposed to extending the standard, and feared it would overload the judicial system.
Crevoisier Crelier replied: “Isn’t it an admission of impotence or carelessness to give up punishing acts on the sole grounds that the justice system can’t absorb them?”
“Violence begins with words”, added Maya Graf of the Green Party.
Translated from French with DeepL/gw
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, if you want to learn more about how we use technology, click here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
