Welcome to strukturelle!
​
Our vision: equality and fairness in society.
We actively develop structures and promote gender fairness.
​
Our strength is based on a solid foundation with competent founders who make valuable contributions through their specialist knowledge. As bridge builders, we critically analyze existing structures and introduce innovative approaches.
​
Our goal is to bring about lasting change. We rethink power relations and rely on inclusive processes to promote a fairer and more harmonious society.
​
The strukturelle team develops or organizes projects in the area of equality together with other organizations.
Do you have an idea and need support? Contact us.
strukturelle AS A PARTNER
#EGTN: A project to support scientific research, political institutions and citizens' initiatives to design a more inclusive digital world
The presence of women in the world university – in tant que professors titulaires et à des posts de direction – is cruciale non seulement pour le développement des connaissances scientifiques.
With Wine for Equality, which benefits from the rights to use the original photos of Frida Kahlo and is imported by a Mexican businesswoman, we are initiating a partnership that highlights female leadership.
AWARDS
​
Awarding of the Doron Prize 2023 to Natalie Urwyler: Laudation
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
My mother had Mühe with me as a daughter who didn't at all correspond to her image of a gentle, adaptable girl. I was lucky to have a father who loved and encouraged his daughter's "independence" throughout her life. My father was an exception in the 1950s. Back then, society was on my mother's side: Girls should be gentle and sweet, not show off or stand out, and definitely forego studying because one day they'll get married and the education would never be worth it.
What do girls do in this situation? They capitulate early or they fight - usually all their lives - against prejudices and constant discrimination with more or less success: in their families, at school, during vocational training, in studies, at work, in politics. Endless.
That was 70 years ago! That is often the answer. But we experience it every day: women are still made invisible today: they are hidden behind veils and burkas, they are supposed to serve and not raise their voices. They are excluded from education, driven away because of their supposedly inferior value. You are deprived of the right to control your own body. All over the world, women are still prevented from living a self-determined life.
Not in Switzerland?
“But not in Switzerland,” some will reply to me: “Women have political rights in Switzerland. Although it's late, there has been an equal opportunities law since 1996." I would like to show you how this is still possible in Switzerland today. And this is based on the experiences that today's Doron Prize winner, Natalie Urwyler, has had.
She was born in Ins in 1973. So around 20 years after me. And in fact, as a girl, she encounters the same, well-known stereotypes: “An education, forget studying, is not necessary for girls, they get married after all.” “What, you want to go to high school and with type C. Mathematics, physics, natural sciences - These are not topics for girls.”
Regarding her career choice of surgery, anesthesia, intensive care and emergency medicine, she hears from her superiors: “Emergency medicine is unsuitable for women.” She is referred to pediatrics or family medicine, which can be carried out part-time and with children.
Luckily, Natalie Urwyler is a fighter. She pursues her goal against all odds. She realizes her dream and becomes an anesthesiologist and works for Rega as an emergency doctor for 8 years.
In 2005, she had the courage to express her desire to complete her habilitation in anesthesiology and become a professor in a career interview for the first time. Response from the male supervisor: “What you? Don’t you want a child?” As a result, she lacks any support because it is precisely these superior men who decide on the career opportunities of the interns. Natalie does research in her free time.
Ray of hope America
2010 a ray of hope. She receives a scholarship from the Swiss National Science Foundation to Stanford University in California. There she experiences something astonishing: everyone, women and men, has to take a course on sexual harassment when they enter the university. For the first time in her life she learns that her gender doesn't matter. “Studying is all about facts, ideas and performance. Skin color, gender or origin are not important. “I felt free like never before and I was intellectually productive,” she remembers. The foundations for your habilitation will be ready at the end of your stay.
No support from superiors
Back in Switzerland the awakening comes. Natalie Urwyler's experiences after her return can only be told in brief terms: Instead of time for research, she receives twice as much night and shift work as her male colleagues.
Difficulties arise in the hospital because the right to work reduction for pregnant and breastfeeding women is not respected. The women suffered from the stressful work situation and sought help from the anesthetist in a higher position. This is committed to ensuring that the labor law is followed in the hospital, at least for pregnant and breastfeeding women.
After an abortion, she became pregnant again in 2013 and had to be hospitalized. Your gynecologist prescribes a reduced workload and only sedentary, quiet activities. Working in teaching and research would be ideal for this. But what do your superiors do three months later? They ban her from working in the research area and teaching. After the birth, she is completely forbidden from returning to teaching and research work: it is not for mothers. Finally, the employer terminates her with the reason: broken relationship of trust. Natalie Urwyler files a supervisory complaint with the University of Bern. The answer is a long time coming.
Another bright spot. In 2014, almost a year late, her habilitation in anesthesiology was recognized. Natalie Urwyler is the second woman to complete her habilitation in this subject in Bern.
Attempting a new beginning
Your professional life is in ruins: here the small child, there the lack of a job. She hardly receives any responses to applications. A job interview is the final straw. She realizes that she is being bullied. The former employer advised not to hire Ms. Urwyler because of her “difficult character.” Only now, at the end of 2014, did she decide to sue under the Equal Opportunities Act: for revenge dismissal, promotion and wage discrimination. The qualified anesthetist and young mother is now unemployed and has to - with an academic education and 15 years of professional experience! - go stamping. She is faced with the choice of either becoming a housewife or starting over.
Natalie Urwyler decides to do a second training course. The 42-year-old former senior doctor is now an assistant doctor again - first in intensive care medicine, later in internal medicine. The wage loss is enormous, amounting to 70 percent.
A great personal loss and for society
Discrimination in the workplace is always a personal disaster for women: associated with devaluation, professional questioning and enormous psychological stress.
The economic damage to our society is at least as bad. For almost 20 years, more women than men have been studying medicine. As mothers, they experience the stress in hospitals particularly strongly due to the strain of work and family. The majority of their income goes to external childcare and, through double taxation, to the state. They end up asking themselves, “Why am I doing this to myself?” and they leave the profession. If all the trained women had stayed in the profession, the current shortage of female doctors would be less severe. Can our society afford this?
Natalie Urwyler is not an isolated case. Toxic workplaces with discrimination against women in the workplace and bullying exist everywhere: at universities, in hospitals, companies, administrations, smaller companies, and they happen at all levels of the hierarchy.
Things are looking up, the lawsuit is confirmed
In 2017, Natalie Urwyler's fight showed its first success. The Bern regional court finds a revenge dismissal based on the Equal Opportunities Act (GIG Art. 10). The verdict was confirmed by the Higher Court of the Canton of Bern in July 2018. The verdict on the question of whether there was promotion and pay discrimination is expected to be decided in 2023.
After the recognition of the revenge termination, the fighter for women's rights received the Prix Courage 2018 from the Observer. Discrimination in the workplace is becoming a public issue. Since then, Natalie Urwyler has received invitations to lectures and workshops, takes part in student congresses, and she has the strength to accompany women in similar situations.
You need role models
Role models like Natalie Urwyler are important. In the meantime, more and more women are daring to file a lawsuit. Ms. Urwyler's was the 111th, and a few years later there were already several hundred. The most current lawsuit is that of former manager Yasmine Motarjemi at Nestlé. Her lawsuit was supported by the Vaud Cantonal Court in February 2023 due to allegations of bullying. The judgment is final. And a small sensation because bullying is very difficult to prove.
Women who are discriminated against in the workplace often hear: “You can sue.” But that is quicker said than done, because a lawsuit not only requires a lot of strength and perseverance. The costs are also enormous. If she hadn't won her lawsuit, Natalie Urwyler would have ended up in personal bankruptcy.
In order to prevent women from having to fight and sue alone, Natalie Urwyler works together with three lawyersstructural founded.
structural is an organization that promotes projects to implement equality and is committed to good governance and transparent structurescultures in the workplace.
Thank you Natalie Urwyler for your courage and persistence!
«Thank you for never giving up despite suffering and despair over the years!
Thank you for your great commitment to the women in this country. You were never just about yourself. You were always aware that you were fighting this fight on behalf of other women.
A big thank you also goes to the Doron Foundation, which is giving the issue of equality between women and men weight in the public eye by awarding the 2023 prize to Natalie Urwyler. This is important: Ultimately, equality is about nothing less than a just and fair society in this country.
Thank you, dear audience, for listening.»
​
Yvonne Schärli-Gerig President of the Federal Commission for Women, former government councilor for the canton of Lucerne
Eulogy
P.D. Dr. med. Natalie Urwlyer
EMILIE KEMPIN SPYRI PRIZE
FOR ZITA KÜNG
The Swiss Bar Association (SAV) awarded our founder Zita Küng with the Emilie Kempin-Spyri Prize on June 11, 2021.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
With the Emilie Kempin-Spyri Prize, the SAV honors lawyers, people or organizations who have made a special contribution to the issues of equality between women and men in the profession, judiciary, politics and society or who serve as a special role model for lawyers have.
Emilie Kempin-Spyri
Emilie Kempin-Spyri was the first Swiss woman to receive her doctorate in law from the University of Zurich in 1887. At that time she was not allowed to practice as a lawyer because as a woman she did not have active citizenship, so she emigrated to New York. Thanks to Emilie Kempin-Spyri, a new law on lawyers was introduced in the canton of Zurich in 1898, which enabled women to practice the legal profession despite the lack of active citizenship. In doing so, she paved the way for Anna Mackenroth, who was the first woman in Switzerland to take the new bar exam and received her qualification as a lawyer on January 21, 1900.
Zita Küng: The first Emilie Kempin-Spyri Prize winner
“An extraordinarily courageous woman” is the first prize winner, Zita Küng. The Zurich lawyer has dedicated her life to the cause of equality between women and men in society and in the law. “For Zita Küng, the focus was on the factual, the breaking of the ‘patriarchal gravity’, as she calls the all-encompassing phenomenon of power structures,” explains jury member Dr. Agnes Dorman. As a founding member of the Organization for Women's Causes (OFRA), Küng wanted to fundamentally change society since the women's movement in the 1980s. She succeeded in this, said laudator Agnes Dormann: “Zita Küng's commitments read like an outline of the history of the slow, still ongoing legal equality of women in Switzerland. She is an extraordinarily courageous woman who has achieved a lot with her colleagues.”
«In the fight for our rights, we women have unfortunately often been pushed down the wrong path. Instead of working freshly and happily on our work, we had to overcome, step by step, the wildest prejudices about our abilities.» (Emilie Kempin-Spyri, 1897)
PRIX COURAGE DE L'OBSERVATEURPOUR NATALIE URWYLER
The Observateur a décerné à notre fondatrice Natalie Urwyler le Prix Courage en 2018.
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
​
The Prix Courage is a recompense décernée by the magazine Suisse observer accorde des prêts depuis 1997.
​
«La Suisse is a special gens who agisset là où attendre met les autres en danger, qui s'expriment haut et fort là où le silence cache l'injustice, qui sont honnêtes là où mentir serait plus facile», voilà comment Andres Büchi, rédacteur en chef de l'Observer, décrit l'idée du Prix Courage. .
Chaque année, the editorial team of the observer examines the suggestions of his readers and passes through the crible of incomprehensible media reports on the courageous acts and the intrépides actions in the faveur d'objectifs plus élevés. The dizaines de cas sont étudiés, les antécédents sont clarifiés, des témoins indépendants sont interrogés jusqu'à ce qu'il soit clair quelles personnes et quelles actions ont agi de manière particulièrement altruiste et courageuse. The Observer presented itself in a similar way to the courage and moral courage of the Observer as well as convaincants in an article in the cover of the magazine and on the Internet site of the Observer.
The evaluation of individual actions is not easy for the jury or for the reader: "Tous les candidates nominés by the Observateur ont réalisé des réalisations exceptionnelles à cet égard, et la nomination au Prix Courage est à cet égard une récompense bien meritée."
​
Natalie Urwyler: laureate 2018
Natalie Urwyler returns the Prix Courage 2018 for her courage and perseverance. Natalie Urwyler was conceived as a young talent prometteur, a future professor who menait des recherches à la célèbre university de Stanford. Elle a travaillé comme médecin-chef à l'Inselspital - et elle a tout perdu: son emploi, sa career, sa réputation. Elle a tout perdu parce qu’elle s’exprimait dans un environnement dominé par les hommes. Encore et encore, with obstination, with courage and moral par excellence.Natalie Urwyler saved her persévérance lui ferait plus d'ennemis que d'amis; 90 for cents of medical personnel at the Inselspital sont des hommes, il existe une hierarchie qui va et vient, de nombreux médecins seniors se considèrent encore comme des surhumains - et se comportent comme tels.
Bien avant devenir elle-même mère, Natalie Urwyler a milité à plusieurs reprises et objectivement pour l'égalité des chances de career pour les femmes, le respect du congé de maternité et la protection des femmes enceintes. Mais pour beaucoup d'hommes en blanc, elle avait tout simplement une trop grande gueule. Alors qu'elle n'était pas disposée à retourner travailler à 100% après son congé de maternité, elle a été licenciée.
This is addressed to the tribunal, which is a system of discrimination and a reason for the tribunals. The island is open to the employer, but there is also an obligation to work. Natalie Urwyler worked as a medical assistant in a small hospital. With a moral courage, Natalie Urwyler is fighting for her birthday. Have courage, a porté devant les tribunaux le license de l'île et ainsi remporté une victoire importante pour toutes les travailleuses. Jamais auparavant une femme n'avait accusé une entreprise de violation de la loi sur l'égalité des chances, n'avait eu raison et - en fait - n'aurait dû être réintégrée. Natalie Urwyler says that her great object is not part of her personal career, but she has found a young woman's best conditions.
​
«Tous les candidates nominés par l'Observer ont réalisé des réalisations exceptionalnelles à cet égard, et la nomination au Prix Courage is a récompense bien méritée à cet égard.»
(Observersource)
