A project of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation

In 1971, the Swiss people agreed to grant women the right to vote at national level. The idea of this animated film series, particularly suited for social networks such as Instagram, is to present and contextualise the arguments of the supporters and opponents of women’s suffrage. Each mini-clip of the series is set on an original poster of the different elections (as the population has voted several times on this issue at federal and cantonal level). The idea is to show the difference between our time and that of the past, when the division of roles between men and women was very deeply rooted in society; so much so that it was not uncommon to find posters even in favour of women’s suffrage that were also marked by a certain sexism.

A research project as well

In addition to creating mini-scenarios from the posters, it was also necessary to contextualise and understand the posters, as well as secure the rights of use. Poster historian Jean-Charles Giroud helped a lot with the film, on the one hand by pre-selecting a number of interesting posters, and on the other hand by doing a lot of research into the rights holders and descendants. The project was supported by the RTS Documentary Unit (Steven Artels) and translated into all national languages. See the RTS page (Swiss television, French version) on this subject. as well as on the Swiss Television (Romanche Version page).