Gabrielle Nanchen

Erling Mandelmann : Gabrielle Nanchen (1993)

Gabrielle Nanchen , née Gabrielle Stragiotti (born March 31, 1943 in Aigle ; resident in Icogne and France ) is a Swiss politician ( SP ), one of the first eleven women elected to the National Council .

Life

As the daughter of Gabriel Stragiotti, of Italian origin, and the Cécile nee Thiault, of French origin, Gabrielle Stragiotti graduated from the University of Lausanne with a degree in social sciences in 1965 . In 1966 she graduated from the School of Social Work in Lausanne, whereupon she worked as a social worker for the canton of Valais until 1969 . In 1967 she married the psychologist Maurice Nanchen, with whom she has three children.

In 1971, the year that women’s right to vote and suffrage was introduced at the federal level, Nanchen made the leap into the National Council as a representative of the Social Democratic Party (SP). At 28, she was the second youngest of the first eleven elected national councilors. In 1979 she resigned from her position in the Grand Chamber. In the State Council elections in 1977 Nanchen had received enough votes for a mandate, but had to leave her seat to the liberal Arthur Bender, who was placed after her . Since the Valais constitution forbids two state councilors residing in the same district, Antoine Zufferey from the Christian Democratic People's Party , who, like Nanchen, lived in the district of Sierre, who was elected with a higher number of votes , had priority. In doing so, she missed the chance to become the first woman in Switzerland to join a cantonal executive. In 1983 she ran unsuccessfully for the Council of States .

Nanchen worked from 1980 as Vice President of the Federal Commission for Women's Issues and as President of the Valais association Femmes - Rencontres - Travail. From the end of the 1980s she was a delegate of the Directorate for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Aid (from 1996 Directorate for Development and Cooperation ) responsible for relations with the Council of Europe on North-South issues. From 1998–2009 she was a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross , 1998–2002 as a member and President of the Board of Trustees of Swissaid, and 1999–2006 as President of the Foundation for the Sustainable Development of Mountain Regions. She was also involved in the 2010s as Vice-President of the Compostelle-Cordoue Association, which was founded in 2009 by pilgrims on the Way of St. James, Jerusalem and Mecca to promote the exchange between cultures.

During her tenure in the National Council, Nanchen advocated the right to abortion by participating in the drafting of the law for the unpunished termination of pregnancy (time limit solution). In 1977 she initiated a parliamentary initiative on family policy aimed at compulsory maternity insurance , the extension of maternity leave from 10 to 16 weeks and protection against dismissal for pregnant women. In addition, Nanchen sat on numerous parliamentary commissions in the field of social security. Equal pay for women and men and the compatibility of work and family were the focus of her essayistic writing.

Works

• Hommes et femmes. Le partage. Favre, Lausanne 1981.
• Love and power. Thoughts on feminine and masculine values. Benziger, Zurich 1992, ISBN 3-545-34109-7 . Translation of: Amour et pouvoir: Des hommes, des femmes et des valeurs. Favre, Lausanne 1990, ISBN 2-8289-0490-3 .
• Compostelle. De la Reconquista à la Reconciliation. Saint-Augustin, St-Maurice 2008, ISBN 978-2-88011-427-5 .
• with Jean-François Hellio, Nicolas van Ingen: On the Way of St. James. From Switzerland to Santiago de Compostela - A journey to yourself. Mondo, Vevey 2009, ISBN 978-2-88900-208-5 .
• Le goût des autres. Des nouvelles du vivre ensemble. Ed. Saint-Augustin, St-Maurice 2018, ISBN 978-2-88926-169-7 .

Web links

Commons : Gabrielle Nanchen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Thierry Rossier: Gabrielle Nanchen. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . June 12, 2019 , accessed August 9, 2019 .
• Gabrielle Nanchen on the website of the Federal Assembly
• CV of Gabrielle Nanchen (PDF; 2.8 MB)
• Video interview with Gabrielle Nanchen , Parliamentary Services , 2018 (French with German subtitles)
• Gabrielle Nanchen in the archive database of the Swiss Federal Archives

This version of the article is based on the entry in the Historical Lexicon of Switzerland (HLS), which, according to theHLS's usage instructions, is under the Creative Commons license - Attribution - Distribution under the same conditions 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). If the article has been revised and expanded to such an extent that it differs significantly from the HLS article, this module will be removed. The original text and a reference to the license can also be found in the version history of the article.