Women’s safety top goal for French leader

UNITED NATIONS — Fighting violence against women isn’t just a top priority for French President Emmanuel Macron — it’s the top priority, his gender equality minister said Wednesday. And one of the first targets is street harassment.

In an interview, Marlene Schiappa said legislation that she will present to the Cabinet next week would impose stiff fines for gender-based harassment on the street or in public transport. She said the bill is important in both a practical and a symbolic sense.

“It is symbolic because we have to lead that cultural fight,” Schiappa said at the United Nations, where a day earlier she addressed the annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women. “We have to say: ‘Young men, you don’t have the right — you’re not allowed to follow women on the streets, to intimidate them.’”

But she also believes the law can be effectively implemented, adding that the country’s interior minister, Gerard Collomb, is planning to use 10,000 policemen and policewomen to help in the fight. Fines would start at 200 euros, and could go higher if not paid right away, she said. In some cases there also would be a training session at which a violator “will learn many things about street harassment and why you don’t have the right to do that to a woman.”

The proposed law also includes a provision that anyone under 15 cannot consent to sex with an adult. And it extends the statute of limitations on sex crimes, allowing prosecution for 30 years after a purported victim turns 18, rather than 20.

Schiappa said she hopes there will be “quite a consensus” in support of the law in parliament.

She said one of the most important elements of #Metoo — France has its own version called “Balance Ton Porc” — is that people are not only speaking differently about gender violence, but finally listening.