Until the late 20th century the kindergarten in the German-speaking part of Switzerland was a local, mostly private institution (Rüfenacht 1984). Since the mid-1970s, calls have been made in many cantons to integrate the kindergarten into the primary school and thus to make a contribution to equal opportunities. Thereby the influence of early childhood education on later educational success increasingly became a subject of research and numerous studies. Since the 1980s, many German-speaking cantons started to get involved in research concercing early childhood education (Wannack/Herger 2014; Rothen 2016).  Various political, scientific and professional stakeholders have promoted the integration of the kindergarten into the school system and since the late 1980s many German-speaking cantons got active in kindergarten projects (Criblez 2015).

As a result of this rapprochement of the educational institutions, an adjustment of wages and state employment of kindergarten teachers was demanded. Since 1977, when better wages for kindergarten teachers were asked for in the canton of Lucern, political demands regarding better salary were repeatedly part of the agenda settings. The 1981 federal law on equality between women and men (Bundesgesetz über die Gleichstellung von Frau und Mann (GlG)) made wage lawsuits possible. The federal law was based on the approach that the same wage had to be paid for work of equal value. In 1991 the kindergarten teachers of the canton of Basel won a lawsuit that led to a large rise in wages (Bollag 1994). The Solothurn Kindergarten Association filed a wage lawsuit in 1998, which was dismissed in 1999 by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgericht). At the same time, kindergarten teacher Regina Stauffer also sued the city of Zurich for wage discrimination (Bundesgerichtsentscheid 124 II 436; 125 II 530). The court argued that kindergarten teachers would have to spend less working hours in order to fulfill their obligation. In many cantons, kindergarten teachers were only paid 87% of the 100% wages for teachers. The Canton of Bern only changed this practice in 2015. 

The following paper examines the question of how (gender) discrimination between the teachers in elementary school and kindergarten was constructed in the 1990s and how the stakeholders were involved in agenda setting processes. In a further step – if the source material allows answers – the connection between professional and financial status gain and the debate about equal opportunities through early childhood education might be an interesting subject of analysis. The current working thesis assumes that the increasing focus on equal opportunities as a goal  and obligation of the education system led to a higher status of educational work in early childhood (Dombkowski 2001): suddenly kindergarten was important in terms of compensatory education (f.e. Heyer-Oeschger 1974; Beurer 1977). This international research focus led to an increase in the status of the kindergarten teachers, who then fought for the equivalence of their work in terms of salary before the federal court.

The history of the kindergarten in German-speaking Switzerland since the 1980s has hardly been historically analyzed. There are some papers on teacher training, agendasetting and the work of the kindergarten association (Criblez 2015; Rothen 2015; Wannack 2008) which, however, do not deal with the wage claims of the kindergarten teachers. Accordingly, a interesting research desideratum of the social history of the German-speaking kindergarten in Switzerland, its connection with international educational research foci and its implication on agenda setting is to be analyzed.

The analysis is based on the newspaper archive of the Swiss Social Archive, the association journals of the Swiss Kindergarten Association and journals from the cantonal associations of Basel, Bern Zürich and Solothurn. All of these sources have not yet been examined for this question. Thereby it is intended to open up previously barely included source material for the first time. The paper focuses on the change in the social status of kindergarten teachers and examines the underlying processes of agenda setting. Thereby a core topic of social history should be made fruitful here for kindergarten history. Both - the investigation heuristic of the policy-cycle (f.e. Jann/Wegrich 2003) and the interpretations heuristic of the „window of opportunity“ that allows certain ideas to become politically exploited or even implemented (Kingdon 1995) – could serve in the evaluation of the source material. Professional theories (especially structural-functionalist considerations cf. Parson 1939; Radke 1992) shall be taken into account to elaborate the motives of the stakeholders in the agenda setting process.

The paper describes the various wage claims of kindergarten teachers in German-speaking Switzerland after 1996. The actors involved (trade unions, kindergarten teachers, kindergarten associations) and the arguments in the process of the agenda setting are analyzed. The hypothesis is to be revised, according to which the scientific and political focus on early childhood led to a gain in status, which in turn legitimized the demand of the kindergarten teachers for the same wages as primary school teachers.

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