Female employees in Switzerland earn up to 20% less than men occupying the same position, despite having the same training. We are highlighting this disgraceful state of affairs in a campaign for the Zurich Frauenzentrale (center for women), in which we declare that women should not be worth less. We used a peculiarity of the German language to our advantage here: adding the suffix “-in” to many nouns creates the feminine form. We took German names of products that only exist in the masculine form, such as Bohrer (drill), and added the suffix “-in” (Bohrerin) to create a feminine version of exactly the same product. The feminine version was then advertised at a significantly cheaper price. In short: we applied the wage gap directly to consumer goods. We launched our products in pop-up stores in the biggest cities in Switzerland. The range of products was also advertised in striking teleshopping commercials, with high-profile support from TV veteran Walter Freiwald. The campaign was accompanied by print and outdoor advertising, radio commercials as well as online publicity. Of course, people could not buy any of the products – but they could support our cause by becoming a member of the Frauenzentrale.

The situation of women in Switzerland has improved significantly since the 1970s. Newly published studies show that, over the last years, Switzerland has made great progress in gender equality. But the reports also state that in some fields there is still some need for action: female employees in Switzerland earn up to 20% less than men occupying the same position, despite having the same training. In order to draw attention to this disgraceful state of affairs and tackle the problem, we launched our campaign for the Zurich Frauenzentrale centre for women, in which wage inequality was applied to consumer goods to demonstrate the absurdity of this injustice.

The effective result of the campaign was a 150% increase in membership of the Frauenzentrale centre for women within a month (as compared to the previous year). 15,000 views on YouTube. Hundreds of comments and shares on Facebook and Twitter. A report on German TV channel RTL which attracted 1.3 million viewers, as well as many other reports in print and online media. And perhaps most importantly: we got the Swiss public talking about wage inequality.

«Men go to work. Women take care of the household and raise the children»: Unfortunately gender stereotypes like this are still prevalent in Switzerland. This is worrying, because stereotypes undermine the social status of women and lead to disadvantages in education and especially in the labor market. For that reason (and many others) female employees in Switzerland earn up to 20% less than men occupying the same position, despite having the same training. We are highlighting this disgraceful state of affairs in our campaign for the Zurich Frauenzentrale (center for women), in which we declare that women should not be worth less.

Our target group was the entire population of Switzerland. Most people are already aware of the problem of wage inequality, but they simply put up with it and do nothing to combat it (“There’s nothing you can do about it anyway”). We demonstrated the absurdity of this inequality by applying it directly to everyday products. We publicised our collection of products via a range of different channels, and in doing so, inspired many people to become members of the Frauenzentrale (centre for women), which fights against this inequality. The Frauenzentrale supports and represents the concerns of women in politics, work and society and offers consulting and training opportunities.