Social Democrat Andrea Hämmerle is standing down from the House of Representatives after 20 years.

Soon after entering parliament, Hämmerle received an invitation from a women’s parliamentary group welcoming the fact that Graubünden now also had a woman politician. Andrea Hämmerle is male.

Despite that slight blip, the situation for women in the Swiss parliament is going in the right direction (although considering women only got the vote in 1971, things can hardly get worse…)

There were 1,132 female candidates in these elections, up from 1,088 in 2007.

Last month a major campaign was launched to get more women elected to parliament.

Mind you, although there’s a female majority in the Swiss cabinet (4-3), it’s a different story in cantonal politics, where last year women accounted for 30 per cent of the House of Representatives’ seats and only 20 per cent of the Senate.

No parties have absolute equal representation. The Greens have the highest with 48 per cent, followed by the Social Democrats with 47 per cent. The Christian Democrats have a third women, and the Radicals a quarter. The Swiss People’s Party has 18 per cent women.  

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