Zita Küng

Zita Küng (* 1954 in Zurich ) is a Swiss lawyer , organizational consultant and women's rights activist . From 1990 to 1996 she was one of the two heads of the “Office for Equality between Women and Men” in the City of Zurich. Since 1999, Küng has been advising companies and organizations with a focus on gender issues, personnel management and product development. She is still feminist in Switzerland and is still one of the country's best-known feminists.

Life

Zita Küng was born in Zurich and grew up in Seebach . First, she completed training as a primary school teacher at the teachers' college, then she studied singing at the Bern Conservatory . In 1982, Küng began to study law at the University of Zurich , which she completed in 1987. Küng initially worked at the Dielsdorf District Court .

Political commitment

According to his own statements, Küng became politicized in the course of the 1968 protests , for which many women took to the streets in Switzerland at the time. In 1977 she was a founding member of the Organization for the Women's Cause (OFRA) and 1979–1981 its national secretary. For the left Progressive Organizations in Switzerland (POCH) and the group «Women Makes Politics» she worked as a cantonal councilor in the Cantonal Council of Zurich from 1983 to 1987 . She was active in the construction and timber trade union and "an active figure in the strike organization in Zurich" according to a report on the 1991 women's strike .

Professional career

After a referendum in the city of Zurich, in which more than two thirds of the electorate voted in favor of “promoting equality between men and women”, the city set up the so-called “office for equality between women and men”. In addition to Küng, Linda Mantovani Vögeli had also applied, and Mayor Josef Estermann (SP) appointed them both to head the department. As part of this work, which Küng carried out from 1990 to 1996, she carried out numerous campaigns and awareness-raising campaigns, including the “Male violence does not make men” campaign in the city police, where the task at hand was to change the deployment plan for domestic violence, or at all Zurich schools with a view to less stereotypical first career choice. Under her aegis, the office also dealt with sexual harassment in the workplace for the first time in Switzerland.

After working for the city of Zurich, Küng switched to the construction and industry union (GBI, today part of the major union Unia ) and was a member of the national management there from 1996 to 1999. In 1999 she founded the company “EQuality”, a consulting firm for organizations and companies with a focus on gender issues, personnel management and product development, which she has been leading to this day (end of 2018). At the same time, she was managing director of femdat.ch - the women's career portal - from 2010 to 2014.

Küng is active in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and accompanied the introduction of the gender mainstreaming strategy as an expert, which was adopted at the 4th UN World Conference on Women in Beijing . On October 25, 2018, she was awarded the Silver Eagle Medal by the state of Tyrol for “merits in the university sector as well as in equality and anti-discrimination” .

Volunteering

Since 1994, Küng has been an honorary member of the board of trustees of the FRI Foundation - Swiss Institute for Feminist Jurisprudence and Gender Law and on the board of the FRI association. She has been a founding member and board member of Juristinnen Schweiz since 2001 . She is active on the Labyrinthplatz Zurich. As a co-initiator, she founded the “fem! feminist faculty »and leads the year-round feminist courses. She presides over the CH2021 association in order to broadly prepare the celebration of 50 years of women's suffrage in Switzerland in 2021.

Zita Küng regularly gives lectures and lectures, among others at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences and the University of Social Work, Northwestern Switzerland .

Works

• with Doris Doblhofer: Equal opportunity management as a success factor - the practical book. Springer-Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-75419-0 .
• Practical organizational analysis. Understand and design strategies - recognize what is being played. Springer Science + Business Media Verlag, 2nd edition 2015.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} OFRAgetten . In: Emancipation. Feminist magazine for critical women . tape 8 , no. 4 , 1982, doi : 10.5169 / seals-359733 .
2. ↑ ^{a b} Natalie Avanzino: «The privileges of men must be addressed». In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . March 7, 2015, accessed November 13, 2018 . 
3. ↑ Zita Küng. Women lawyers in Switzerland , accessed on November 13, 2018 . 
4. ↑ Zita Küng: "There will be no getting around shortening the working week - not just for people with children". In: Edition F. October 29, 2018, accessed on November 13, 2018 . 
5. ↑ Patricia D'Incau: "When a woman wants, everything stands still". In: Journal B. June 14, 2016, accessed November 13, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Rita Torcasso: Zita Küng - "We wanted to change the culture of violence in society." City of Zurich - Presidential Department, 2015, accessed on November 13, 2018 . 
7. ↑ Lic. Iur. Zita Küng. Feminist Faculty, accessed November 16, 2018 . 
8. ↑ 13 personalities awarded the "Tyrolean Eagle Order". Office of the Tyrolean Provincial Government, October 25, 2018, accessed on November 16, 2018 . 
9. ↑ Zita Küng. New Women's Movement 2.0, accessed November 13, 2018 . 
10. ↑ Empowerment of women. In: 100frauen.ch. June 25, 2018. Retrieved November 13, 2018 .