Women at the Top

Elisabeth Kopp, 47, last week became the first woman ever elected to Switzerland's ruling Federal Council. With 124 votes out of a possible 241 , Kopp was chosen by the Federal Assembly to fill a vacancy on the seven-member council. She will become President of Switzerland some time within the next seven years; the top job is rotated yearly among the panel's members.

When Kopp entered politics in 1970, Swiss women were still a year away from being granted the right to vote in nationwide elections. A member of the conservative Radical Democratic Party, Kopp has nonetheless backed environmentalist and women's causes that are unpopular with many of her party's leaders.

She also overcame a pre-election smear campaign in some Swiss newspapers against her husband Hans, an attorney. According to those reports, he was suspended from practicing in court for six months in 1972 following allegations, which he has denied, that he had spanked some of his secretaries with a bamboo stick. Elisabeth Kopp asked that her qualifications be considered, not her husband's. Her election, she said last week, was "a success for all the women of Switzerland."