Elisabeth Joris

Elisabeth Joris is a Swiss historian. She has written and edited several works on gender history in Switzerland, and was co-editor of feminist magazine Olympe, and co-initiator of the Swiss women's strike">Swiss people">Swiss women's strike. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Zurich in 2020.

Biography

Joris was born in 1946 in Visp. She grew up in Visp and has lived in Zürich since 1966. Joris graduated from school at a time when women rarely proceeded to higher education, so she first gained her teaching qualification. She studied history and history of French literature at the University of Zurich and earned a licentiate degree under the direction of Rudolf Braun in 1980. Although she began a doctorate, she found she preferred to study women's history, which at the time was not considered by her professors to be a suitable subject for a doctoral degree. She then worked as an elementary school teacher and a freelance historian. She has taught at the Riesbach Cantonal School in Zurich and at the Lucerne School of Social Work. She retired in 2010.
Joris co-founded the group Kritisches Oberwallis and the critical newspaper . She edited several works about women's and gender history in Switzerland. In 1986, she published a pioneering source book about women's history in Switzerland alongside Heidi Witzig. Joris wrote two articles, Women, Gender, Social Movements and Züblin-Spiller, Else for the International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
In 2010, she submitted the manuscript of her fifth book to the University of Zurich as her dissertation, finally earning a doctorate. Joris was a co-editor of the feminist magazine Olympe. Joris was a co-initiator of the first Swiss women's strike in 1991.
Joris is married and a mother of two.

Publications (selection)

As an author

Elisabeth Seiler-Joris, Sozialer Wandel im Oberwallis in der zweiten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Zürich: 1979.
with Heidi Witzig: Brave Frauen, aufmüpfige Weiber: Wie sich die Industrialisierung auf Alltag und Lebenszusammenhänge von Frauen auswirkte. Zurich: Chronos, 1992.
with Adrian Knoepfli: Eine Frau prägt eine Firma: Zur Geschichte von Firma und Familie Feller. Zürich: Chronos, 1996.Liberal und eigensinnig: Die Pädagogin Josephine Stadlin – die Homöopathin Emilie Paravicini-Blumer. Handlungsspielräume von Bildungsbürgerinnen im 19. Jahrhundert. Zürich: Chronos, 2010.

As an editor

with Heidi Witzig: Frauengeschichte: Dokumente aus zwei Jahrhunderten zur Situation der Frauen in der Schweiz. Zürich Limmat, 1986.
with Katrin Rieder and : Tiefenbohrungen: Frauen und Männer auf den grossen Tunnelbaustellen der Schweiz, 1870–2005. Baden: Hier + jetzt, 2006.
with, Angela Zimmermann: Zürich 68: Kollektive Aufbrüche ins Ungewisse. Baden: Hier + jetzt, 2008.
with Renate Wegmüller: „Stimmen, wählen und gewählt zu werden sei hinfort unsere Devise und unser Ziel“. Kurze Geschichte des Frauenstimmrechts in Quellen. Wettingen, eFeF, 2011.
with Rita Schmid: Damit der Laden läuft. Ein kritischer Blick in die scheinbar vertraute Welt des Detailhandels. Zürich: Rotpunktverlag, 2019.