French bar tells women: ‘This isn’t Paris. It’s only men here’

[central] Paris.” Another said: “The mentalities are different, here it’s like it is back in the old country.”

The undercover report comes amid rising tension in France after a series of terrorist attacks and less than six months before a presidential election in which the far-Right leader, Marine Le Pen, is expected to do well.

Axelle Lemaire, the minister for digital affairs, said the footage appeared to show an “intolerable” and “illegal” case of “discrimination against women”. She added that it was not a question of religion and France’s Muslim communities should not be blamed.

The bar owner denied enforcing a men-only policy. “It was customers the women were talking to. I’ve never refused to serve anyone,” Amar Salhi, 59, said. “The TV report was distorted.”

Ms Remadna, the founder of a group dedicated to saving children from crime and radicalisation called “The Mothers’ Brigade”

said the men’s attitudes might be acceptable in Saudi Arabia, but “this is France”.

French women’s groups have organised a series of protests this year over male-only cafés and areas where they say women are discouraged from wearing skirts or walking alone in the evening. The issue was highlighted in January by Pascale Boistard, then France’s minister for women’s rights. “There are areas in our country where women are not accepted,” she said.

Ms Remadna’s outspoken denunciations of such attitudes have long made the divorced mother of four a controversial figure. She has been threatened and vilified.

In the past two years, at least 15 young people have left Sevran, where she lives, to join jihadists in Syria or Iraq.