The fight against violence against women, beyond the simple political domain, supposed to be a “great cause” of the five-year term, thus becomes an important issue five months before the next presidential election. This is one of the reasons that pushed Fiona Texeire and Hélène Goutany to work together, as explained to us. Helene Goutany : “I met Fiona between the two confinements, we discussed a lot, we had favorite themes in common such as feminism and sexism and we very quickly arrived at the subject that annoys: gender-based and sexual violence. Fiona me. explained a lot what she had experienced as a parliamentary collaborator, the gender-based and sexual violence she had suffered during her various collaborations and I was quite dismayed by their extent. This is how the idea of a podcast was born: in the middle of the presidential year, we will choose a candidate, we will then choose MPs who will be employers of collaborators, and we had to heart both to talk about this subject because the fight against violence against women was the great cause of the five-year term and the question is how can we fight against violence against women when some, invested in democratic power, are the authors? ”
For the first episode already online, Edith Cresson testifies. If there is anyone who can talk about sexism in politics, it is the one who remains to this day the only woman to have served as Prime Minister in the history of the country. “She was in Matignon 30 years ago, she had one of the shortest terms of office, she faced violence from the media, her political class, parliament and her fellow ministers. We cared about it. to have her testimony, she does not have her tongue in her pocket and it is invigorating. But above all, 30 years later, these masculinist norms are still at work “, notes Hélène Goutany.
For Fiona Texeire, things haven’t necessarily improved since: “I am a collaborator of elected officials, I have been doing this job for thirteen years, I worked in town hall, in the Senate, in the ministerial cabinet, in Matignon. And for thirteen years I have been a witness and sometimes a victim of this violence. sexist and sexual, she testifies. The occasion of this podcast was to talk about this violence which is a norm in politics and which has not changed much. Despite parity and some progress, women still do not compete with men in this area. “
“When you arrive at 22, 25 years as a parliamentary collaborator in the Senate and you see all this pomp, this weight of history, Napoleon’s throne, the sabers of the bailiffs. We say to ourselves that if such a senator me made a gritty joke, if something touched my thigh, if so and so says that I slept to get there, the reflex is not to say to yourself ‘I’m going to go and grab.’ Who first grabbed? You are employed by the senator. The first instinct is to say to yourself ‘you’re lucky to be there, shut up, look how good it is, respect the place and the institution and shut up’ “, she continues.
We could still have imagined that in the wake of the #MeToo movement in 2017, languages could have been loosened and sexist behavior in politics could finally be denounced, made public. Fiona Texeire answers us: “#Metoo made it possible to finally put these questions at the heart of the public debate, before we talked about them among women but the listening was not released. There are many more women in the Assembly than during the previous legislature, before the parties preferred to pay fines rather than invest women, it still rose to 27 million euros between 2012 and 2017. But let’s take an example: a fortnight ago, a deputy, Julien Aubert, in order not to name him, refuses to call the minister ‘Madam Minister’, he refuses the feminization of the title, that means refusing the feminization of power. When we see the way in which deputies behave today: some are violent spouses, some harass their collaborators … We can not say that the subject is settled at the level of the National Assembly. ” Hélène Goutany agrees: “The political #Metoo did not happen. We still have, in our Assembly, men who are perpetrators of gender-based and sexual violence, these men are doing exactly what the government intends to eradicate from our society, it tolerates within it this that he does not tolerate the average French. What is appalling is that it is always the same scenario: very young women who start in politics and they empty their bags. We what we want is the listen, we want there to be room to listen to them. “
“We must insist on this: it is all the more difficult when the author of the violence against you is a man of power, these behaviors are corroborated by studies. The collective ‘Dear collaborator’ and the council of Europe in 2018 quantified this violence: one in two female employees is the victim of sexist jokes, one in three female employees is the victim of sexist insults or embarrassing behavior and at European level, one in two female employees is the victim of sexist remarks. These women are still few who want to go to court because it is difficult to attack powerful men “, highlighted Hélène Goutany.
“Y a pas mort d’homme”, a Binge Audio podcast. The first episode is online, the second arrives Friday, November 19.