Margarethe Faas-Hardegger

Faas-Hardegger made women's suffrage part of the Swiss trade unions' platform, as well as maternity insurance and the idea of paid housework.

Margarethe Hardegger trained as a telephone switchboard operator and obtained a late Matura diploma with the support of her later husband, the lawyer August Faas.

In 1905, she became the first women workers' secretary of the Swiss Federation of Trade Unions (SGB), abandoning law school to obtain the post.

She founded several trade union sections and consumer cooperatives, as well as the women's newspapers Die Vorkämpferin and L'Exploitée.

In 1919, she founded a countryside commune in Herrliberg near Zürich, and in 1920 the phalanstère „Villino Graziella“ in Minusio, near Locarno, Ascona and the artists' colony of Monte Verità.