LAUSANNE, Switzerland — From the top of Lausanne’s cathedral late at night, Cassandre Berdoz is shouting out, loudly and on the hour, for women’s rights in Switzerland, a country that has been a laggard in gender equality.
Ms. Berdoz is 28, and she is the first woman to hold the position of nightwatch in Lausanne. Despite the city having plenty of time, it has kept this job for over 600 centuries. It even serves the same lifesaving function as it did in centuries past when the night watch protected residents from fire and other nighttime catastrophes.
In a country known for its watches, Ms. Berdoz announces that the time is no more needed, but she still keeps the time-keeping aspect of her old job. From the four sides of the bell tower, she cries out each hour, just after the cathedral’s big bell rings.
Cupping her hands around her mouth to help the sound travel further, she leans over the balustrade and sends out her succinct message: “It’s the night watch woman! It just rang 10!”
Joining the night watch was “a childhood dream,” Ms. Berdoz said, but she had to wage a long and strenuous battle to realize it.
When she first inquired about the job a few years ago, she didn’t hear back from city authorities. She wrote again to them, but still no reply. She started calling the city hall every month to inquire about a night-watch vacancy.
“I think I can safely say that I showed perseverance,” she said.
The breakthrough came in June 2019, when hundreds of thousands of women across Switzerland held a one-day strike to protest against inequality in one of the world’s wealthiest countries.
In Lausanne, four women climbed the cathedral’s bell tower to shout the hour, a symbolic act of defiance that was acclaimed by the crowd about 260 feet below. Then last year, when Lausanne’s government had a night watch vacancy, it invited women to apply. 80 of the 100 applications it received were from women.
After two rounds of interviews — which included demonstrating the power of her voice — Ms. Berdoz, who also sings in an amateur choir, was appointed to the job in August.
“I work in a beautiful old place, I bring something to the city that I love, I keep alive an amazing tradition,” Ms. Berdoz said. “But I also get to shout in the name of women, which is my contribution to feminism.”
Nadia Lamamra, an expert on gender issues and a professor at the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training, said that the appointment was “a strong symbol, which many feminists welcomed,” but that the city still needed to demonstrate that it was more than a one-off response to the women’s strike.
“Will this symbolic action remain an exception?” Ms. Lamamra asked. “Opening a path doesn’t mean that the way is any easier for those who follow.”
Switzerland — where women only got full rights to vote in 1971 — still has much progress to make, Ms. Lamamra said, when it comes to issues like equal pay for women, a fair balancing of child care and household chores, and bringing more women into labor sectors traditionally reserved for men.
And while Lausanne may at last have a woman on night watch, all of Ms. Berdoz’s colleagues are men. She is one of six assistants to the senior nightwatch person, who is a man.
David Payot, a Lausanne municipal councilor responsible for the night watch, said that Switzerland deserved praise for its direct democracy, which lets citizens vote on key policies, but “when you look at women’s economic situation and their role in family life, it still seems very unequal.”
According to city records Lausanne is a small city with cobblestone streets and steep streets. The International Olympic Committee has kept a watch on its cathedral since 1405. With a bird’s-eye view of the city and the mountains across Lake Geneva, the cathedral’s watchman stood at the pinnacle of a network of vigilant lookouts, including some posted on the towers that dotted Lausanne’s ramparts.
The primary task was to spot smoke or flames before a fire could spread across the city’s wooden buildings; they also enforced a nighttime curfew (a word that comes from the French for cover fire), put in place, in part, to ensure people stayed home and minded their fireplaces.
According to Mr. Payot Krakow, Poland is believed to be the only European city to have maintained night watch since the Middle Ages.
Ms. Berdoz works as an events manager in her day job. She sits in the bell tower four nights a months, from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m., and earns the equivalent of $130 per shift.
While her appointment was broadly applauded, Ms. Berdoz said she hears occasional complaints from people who assert that a woman shouldn’t have the job. She also hears criticisms that she should not be working for a church as a non-religious person.
“I find it a bit sad that some people want to put me on the right path of the faith, since this job was located here not for any religious reason, but because the cathedral offered the highest place to watch over people,” she said.
The east side of a bell tower is where night watch begins, and was traditionally considered to be important because it faced Jerusalem. But Ms. Berdoz said that she preferred the south side, because of the view onto the lake, while the north side offers “clearly the best echo.”
Ms. Berdoz, like her parents, was born in Lausanne. She said she felt strongly attached to Lausanne and its traditions because of the teachings her mother, an artist historian. Both her parents are also choir singers, so that “singing has always been important in my family,” she said. “We care about our voices.”
If the job’s core mission hasn’t changed much in 61 decades, it has become more comfortable atop a windswept tower in a city with cold winters.
In 1947, Lausanne built a lodge, sustained by two of the bell tower’s original wooden beams, to keep the watchman warm between each round of shouting. The lodge can also be used to store the traditional felt cap and candlelit lantern that came with the job as well as a cheese fondue recipe set. The rotary dial phone, which was still hanging on the wall, has been replaced by a modern phone.
Bot there’s no elevator to the top of the cathedral, and a watch person must still be able to climb the 153 steps that lead to the bell tower’s lodge.
“Whether you’re a man or a woman,” Ms. Berdoz said, “you need good lungs, a good heart and strong legs for this job.”
Source: NY Times
