Ruth Mascarin

Ruth Mascarin

Ruth Mascarin , née Ruth Bircher (born August 18, 1945 in Liebefeld , Köniz ; legal domicile in Breno TI ) is a Swiss politician from Basel . As a representative of the new women's movement , she was the first national councilor of the Progressive Organizations in Switzerland (POCH).

Life

Ruth Bircher is the daughter of the graphic designer and artist Eduard Bircher and Elsbeth, née Stalder. Her mother took care of the family as an accountant. In Riehen Bircher attended the primary school in Basel , the girls' school . While studying medicine , she married Marco Mascarin. In 1972 she completed her studies at the University of Basel , whereupon she worked as an assistant doctor at the Laufen Hospital , as she was unable to get a public job due to her political commitment in the canton of Basel-Stadt . In 1979 she opened her own practice in Basel, which she converted into a group practice in 1983 and where she worked until 2011. In addition, she worked as an author and expert on ethics in medicine and genetic engineering , in particular from 1996–1998 in the extra-parliamentary expert commission on genome analysis .

Ruth Mascarin grew up in a family that dealt intensively with political issues. Her father belonged to the artistic-anarchist wing of the Labor Party in Basel . In the wake of the sixty-eight movement at the University of Basel, Mascarin participated in the founding of the Medicine Group of Progressive Students (POCH-MED), in 1970 the Progressive Organizations Basel (POB) and in 1971 the Progressive Organizations of Switzerland. For the POB she politicized 1972–1980 in the Grand Council of the Canton of Basel-Stadt . In 1975 she ran for the National Council, and in 1976 she became the first woman with considerable success for the Basel-Stadt Government Council , but in both cases the number of votes was insufficient for an election. In 1979 Mascarin in Basel and Andreas Herczog in Zurich won their first two national council mandates for POCH. In the National Council she was primarily involved in women's, environmental and social issues, such as 1982–1983 as a member of the commission for the revision of marriage law . She submitted numerous parliamentary proposals, for example in 1980 she objected to the use of photos of naked women as targets in shooting practice by officers. In her votes and interpellations in 1982 and 1984 she also criticized the close economic ties between Switzerland and the apartheid regime in South Africa , in particular the import of uranium from Namibia , which is problematic under international law . In 1985 she resigned from the National Council and only exceptionally spoke up in public. Anita Fetz , who later became the SP Councilor of States, took her seat in the National Council .

As a health politician, Mascarin was a member of the Swiss Society for Social Health Care , which emerged from POCH-MED in 1974. Until it was dissolved in 2011, she also took part in the editing of the social medicine magazine . In 1977 she also co-founded the feminist organization for the cause of women (Ofra), the successor to the POCH women's group, for which she worked until 1997. In the early 1980s she supported the Frauenoase, a contact point for drug addicted women in Basel.

literature

• Georg Kreis : Switzerland and South Africa, 1948–1994 , 2005, v. a. Pp. 173-176 and 420-421.
• Heinz Nigg : We are few, but we are all. Biographies from the 1968 generation in Switzerland , 2008, pp. 272–281.
• Ueli Mäder : 68 - what remains? , 2018, p. 186.

Web links

• Alessandra Widmer: Ruth Mascarin. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . June 12, 2019 , accessed July 28, 2019 .
• Ruth Mascarin-Bircher on the website of the Federal Assembly
• Ruth Mascarin in a report on Swiss television in 1988 on the new marriage law , accessed on July 29, 2019
• Portrait of Ruth Mascarin, in: TagesWoche, 23 December 2011 ( PDF, p. 23 )

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