Soroptimist International was founded in 1921 in California.
Its name comes from the Latin "soror (woman)" and "optima (the best)", in the sense of "the best for women".
Soroptimist International (SI) is a worldwide service club of professional women dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls locally and around the world.
SI has more than 90,000 members in 125 countries who are business and professional women engaged in projects to advance the human rights and status of women.
As a non-governmental organization (NGO) with consultative status at the United Nations, Soroptimist representatives have a voice and direct access to UN bodies in New York, Geneva, Vienna, Rome, Nairobi and Paris.
"Understand, Defend and Undertake" are the three main ideas of the Soroptimist network's commitment to the implementation of its thousands of actions throughout the world.
The Swiss Union was founded in 1950.
Currently it has about 1900 members and 61 clubs.
Soroptimist Geneva gathers the clubs Geneva-Founder and Geneva-Rhône in their common projects