Why women are the key to prosperity

September 12, 2006 on 1:36 pm | In Philosophy |

Raschi blogs about a friend of his, a young mother, and her problem to unite parenting and her job. The problem: part-time jobs simply don’t exits for a software engineer with her qualifications.

In last year’s political discussion, the Society of Swiss students discussed in Berne about how to secure our old age pensions. The strategy is very simple in its core: let the women work fulltime and set more children into this world again. Here comes the reason why:

In Switzerland, the AHV is based on a contract of generations, that means todays working generation pays the old age pension of those who are retired. In return, the forthcoming generations will pay for today’s working generation once they reach retirement.

This works neatly as long as there is a sufficient net reproduction ratio in a given population. Unfortunately, it’s not sufficient in the case of Switzerland like for many other western countries. In other words, more children need to be born again.

However, social welfare not only depends on the number of young people who are able to sustain the other parts of the population. It also depends on the prosperity of that population’s economy. Aymo Brunetti of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs repeatedly pointed out in his columns in the Weltwoche that sustained prosperity of an economy is only possible if it’s able to increase its production. One key factor in increasing Switzerland’s production is to have women pursue their professional careers just like a man would.

It is obvious that women are the key factor to our future. It is also obvious that the support for women isn’t where it should be (although it should be noted that with the redefinition of traditional roles men face similar issues). Instead, I increasingly observe (i.e. the Weltwoche increasingly writes about) voices calling for a restauration of the traditional roles. However, taking a step back isn’t the remedy we need. The next step forward starts with the insight that the combination of one’s job and parenting isn’t a neglectable problem that can e left alone to the respective couples.