- Former President of the National Council, Judith Stamm, has died, as the Lucerne center party announced on Twitter.
- The long-standing CVP national councilor for the canton of Lucerne was also known for her fight for equality for women.
- After the introduction of women’s suffrage in the canton of Lucerne in 1970, she was one of the first women to be elected to the then cantonal council.
From 1971 to 1984 she represented the CVP in the Great Council, as it was then called. In 1983 she was elected to the National Council, which she left in 1999. In 1986, Stamm submitted a motion to the National Council to enforce the equality article in the Federal Constitution.
In 2002 she was awarded the Badge of Honor by the City of Lucerne for her services to the city. Stamm was born in Schaffhausen in 1934 and grew up in Zurich. She was 88 years old.
In 1989, the Federal Council elected her President of the Federal Commission for Women’s Issues. A political highlight for Stamm was her election in 1996 and 1997 as President of the National Council and thus the highest-ranking Swiss woman.
Social politician from the very beginning
In her political work, Stamm focused on social and environmental issues as well as on legislation. In 1986, Stamm filed a motion to enforce the equality article in the federal constitution.
In this way, two years later, she managed to create the Federal Office for Gender Equality. The left-bourgeois repeatedly showed courage to take idiosyncratic positions. She campaigned for a time limit solution as a criminal law regulation of abortion.
She also advocated lowering the age of consent. With this, Stamm alienated rural and conservative party circles. But in the city and agglomeration, she achieved top results in the elections.
In 1986 she was an unsuccessful candidate for the Federal Council to succeed Kurt Furgler and Alfons Egli. She found it unacceptable that her party had not proposed a woman for election to the Federal Assembly.