OK Sweden isn't there yet

[Garth Zietsman]

Like the case of some Swiss cantons resisting giving women the vote until very recently is seems that some parts of Sweden haven't gotten the memo yet.  Consider the following --

A school chef in a town in Sweden has gotten a cease and desist order because her food is BETTER THAN WHAT IS SERVED IN OTHER SCHOOLS!

I am not making this up.

Apparently she produced a 15 item veggie buffet and fresh baked bread, while staying on budget.

No more.

The horror doesn't end here though,"Her traditional Easter and Christmas smörgåsbords may also be under threat." 

[Leon Louw (gmail)]

Wow, the bizarreness of politicians and bureaucrats always amazes me. I suppose I will never get to point where I've seen enough of their madness to no longer be surprised by it.

In her book Super Parents Frances wrote about the Swedish government removing children from mothers considered too obese.

A fascinating aside about Switzerland supposedly not giving women the vote until recently .......  you reveal a more sophisticated understanding than most, in that you mention "some" cantons excluding women.  The popular myth is that it was Switzerland per se.

Anyhow, the story is really interesting.  It wasn't even 'some' cantons, it was just one, and then not a full canton, but a half-canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden.  It's a tiny canton, which at the time had little more than 10,000 citizens.  Whether we can still call the 1970s when women got the vote there "recently" is another matter, especially given how late it happened in many other democracies.

What's more interesting is why it took longer there.  The answer is that voting occurred, and still occurs, in a gemeinde, in which people meet in the village square a vote by show of hands, actually by raising ceremonial swords.  People dress in tradition garb, and men draw, raise their swords, and point them skyward to vote.  

The problem was two-fold -- nothing to do with misogyny -- namely that (a) women didn't have ceremonial swords and (b) the village square was too small for all the men and women.  When this tiny, beleaguered and much criticised community capitulated under international pressure, but mostly pressure from the rest of Switzerland which was being accused of not, as a nation, giving women the vote, they had break with centuries of revered custom and shift meetings from the splendid village square -- I've visited it -- to a nearby much less suitable field.  And women had to buy swords, or vote by less dignified and psychologically demeaning show of hands.

I read somewhere during the 1980s, but haven't seen mention of it since, that women did indeed vote there before; they voted on whether they should have the vote.  And they voted 'no'!  

Bear in mind that Switzerland has the highest level of political sophistication and awareness of any country.  So why did they vote 'no'?  There was much debate that made the reason clear, namely that the village square was too small.  Women argued, for instance, that married couples normally vote the same, so why go to absurd lengths when all that'll happen is two votes have to be counted instead of one. 

 

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Leon Louw

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