Since the late 19th century, more than a third of the work force in the Swiss watch industry has been women, according to statistics from the Swiss government.
Yet you wouldn’t know it from exploring the Musée International d’Horlogerie, a brutalist architecture monument with wavelike walls in the watchmaking city of La Chaux-de-Fonds.
Four women are named, acknowledged for enameling and other specialty skills, but none of the museum’s almost 4,000 watches and clocks on permanent exhibition are signed by female watchmakers.
Even in 2024, women are seldom recognized by the industry or its historical institutions because “it is a very male-dominated industry,” said Nathalie Marielloni, the museum’s vice curator.
And at the museum, “we never really fought for gender issues,” she said, adding that she was not aware of any horological museums in Europe with a different approach.
Yet Ms. Marielloni echoed the government’s statistics. “Just look at the numbers,” she said. “In Switzerland in 1882, there were 3,017 people working in production in the watch industry, and 35 percent were women. In 1944, there were 17,822 — 48 percent were women,” she said, adding that in 1964, employment had risen to 32,879, 52 percent of them women.
