(Paris) Spanish actress Rossy De Palma, muse of director Pedro Almodovar, called on Tuesday in Paris for “equal pay” for women compared to men, adding that she did not understand that governments do not impose it.
Posted at 11:21 a.m.
“The only thing I’m asking for is equal pay and I don’t understand why governments don’t do it,” the actress said in an interview with AFP on the sidelines of the Paris Photo international fair. which pays tribute to 77 women photographers this year and of which she is the guest of honor.
“Afterwards, we don’t need this misery and asking permission to do anything,” she continued, raising her XXL black glasses matching the wispy feathers that adorn her bun.
Apart from the issue of the pay gap, “I stopped asking for favors for women a long time ago, because I believe that we women don’t need anything except to discover ourselves” , she said, walking through the living room in a tight and zipped multicolored dress, with polka dots, signed Jean Paul Gaultier, like her earrings.
For her, “it is time for women to take an interest in themselves”. “For generations we have been devoted to society, to family, to children, to work outside the home and in the home, stuck in our lives. So many artists have had to work in secret. Now we don’t need that anymore.”
“I discover myself all the time and I never define myself like that (like a woman, editor’s note), I don’t limit myself,” she confesses, stressing that she is “still a little naive” at 58.
“I still have curiosity and it’s something magnificent. Otherwise, we become cynical like the political world. There, I’m like a little girl in Paris Photo looking at everyone’s work. It’s so inspiring! “, she says.
Paris Photo’s idea of paying tribute to 77 women photographers this year is “a radical choice that does not correspond to any aesthetic canon of our time and shines the light of feminine power”, argued Italian Federica Chiocchetti, writer, curator and editor, who designed the course.
Rossy De Palma herself selected 25 photos from the stands of 183 exhibitors, galleries and publishers from 31 countries for this 25e edition of the show, which is held at the Grand Palais Éphémère.
Among the female photography professionals honored are the American Bertha E. Jaques (1863-1941) and her cyanotypes – an old monochrome photographic process – as well as the Italian-American activist Tina Modotti (1896- 1942), photographer of the bohemian scene of the 20s in Mexico City or the radical German artist Gabriele Stötzer (b. 1953), who questioned the role of women in East Germany.
At their side, pioneers of a new genre like the South African Zanele Muholi, who does not recognize herself as either a woman or a man, and seeks to “decolonize the image” by working on gender diversity, the Italian Letizia Battaglia who documents the crimes of the Neapolitan mafia, or the Serbian Marina Abramovic, known for her performances of “body art” pushing the representation of danger to the point of putting herself physically in danger, according to Ms.me Chiocchetti.
In 2019, in all the countries of the 27 European Union, women received on average lower wages than men, according to figures published by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE). However, the average gross annual salary gap between women and men varies greatly between EU countries. With a difference of 20%, France occupies an intermediate position.