throwaway301

It's complex. From what I've seen, it's largely fine if you're young and don't have children, or if you're older and your children are past the first year of kindergarten. There is still a proverbial glass ceiling in place at a lot of companies, but there are also a lot of examples of women in prominent positions in business and government.

It gets difficult - again, from what I've seen - when you run into edge cases that brush up against how things are traditionally done. I don't think that a lot of companies have gotten a handle on how to accommodate women with children. For example, average working hours can easily go past 17:30, but most kinderkrippe close at 18:00. There are also social expectations that are hard to interpret or otherwise navigate, especially if you're not a native citizen and didn't grow up in the culture.

I think that the situation isn't that different from a lot of other European countries, and it also appears to be improving (even in my limited time here, I've noticed that there has been a lot of discussion around the gender pay gap, and a stronger focus on accommodating women with children at work).

I can also give several examples of women with children who work, but I can only give one example in my social circle (and my wife's) social circle where the woman wasn't forced to take either a substantial reduction in contractual workload after returning from maternity leave, was fired outright, or was otherwise subject to some form of discrimination for being pregnant.

Our friends are largely university educated and are a mix of expats and Swiss nationals. It is - very - well known among Swiss women in particular that getting pregnant and having a child is a detriment to your career.

I agree that personal observations shouldn't be used to generalize an entire population. However, I've heard enough to believe that what we've seen isn't out of the norm.

Out of the four women I know who are or were pregnant, one was fired immediately after her maternity leave ended, one was forced to go from a 100% to a 20% (one day a week) contract, and one was the target of retaliation by her boss, who felt that it was unfair that she should get pregnant less than three years after she started her job (he told her this in an official setting and cited her pregnancy on her end of year performance appraisal).

The fourth was a graduate student in the final year of her studies. She hasn't been able to find a job since, despite having a good background.

Two of the four women are Swiss, and the other two are German citizens. Three of the four have graduate university degrees (two in hard sciences) and all have good to stellar resumes.

Source: Expat currently living in Switzerland.