Harassing women in the street in France could result in €200 fine
● MPS to debate new law in bid to reduce genderbased violence
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 yesterday, and one of the first targets is street harassment.
In an interview, Marlène Schiappa said legislation that she will present to the French Cabinet next week would impose stiff fines for genderbased 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 before 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, and 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. “I think it’s an important subject that deserves to (stay) out of the usual fight between political groups,” she said.
Schiappa has become one of the most outspoken members of Macron’s government. In her speech at the commission, she declared that 2017 marked “the end of global denial on gender-based and sexual violence”. She said 2018 should not be just the end of an era, but the beginning of another: “Year One after #Metoo.”
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.
“Women have talked about that for many generations,” Schiappa said. “My mother, my grandmother, my greatgrandmother talked with me about gender-based violence that they experienced or witnessed. They all have stories to tell.”
She said that for a long time, women with such stories would hear a dismissive, “C’est la vie,” or be told they just had to deal with it alone. But now after #Metoo, she said, “no one will be able to say to a woman: ‘You have to deal with it’.”
Schiappa said she disagreed strongly with the much-discussed letter written by actress Catherine Deneuve and others saying that the “legitimate protest against sexual violence” stemming from the Harvey Weinstein scandal had gone too far and advocating against “puritanism”.